


Spooning Leads to Forking

by Jaden56



Category: South Park
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Angst, Asphyxiation, Awkwardness, Bathroom Sex, Biting, Blow Jobs, Crush, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dirty Talk, Drama, Dysfunctional Family, Embarrassment, Explicit Language, Falling In Love, Fingerfucking, First Kiss, First Time, Flirting, Foot Fetish, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Frottage, Games, High School, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing Games, M/M, Makeup Sex, Making Out, Masturbation, Pining, Porn Watching, Roughhousing, Sexual Tension, Shower Sex, Siblings, Spanking, Spooning, Teasing, Tickling, Unconventional Families, Underage Sex, Violence, Voyeurism, Watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:22:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 41,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaden56/pseuds/Jaden56
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stan and Craig play a series of games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spoon

Disclaimer: I do not own South Park or its characters, and make no profit from writing this story. South Park & Characters are property of Matt Stone & Trey Parker.

 

 

Craig had the curve of his plastic spoon tucked between his bottom lip and teeth, bouncing the handle against the tip of his nose rhythmically, but to no particular beat in his mind. Ode to the cold chicken soup the cafeteria served up, if anything.

"Is that 'Stayin' Alive'?" Stan Marsh asked across the lunchroom table they shared with their eclectic group of friends.

"Huh?" Craig grunted past his spoon, still tappin' away. He shifted his slow gaze to Stan, the other guy in the process of prodding a piece of broccoli to death with his fork.

"Y'know. The song."

Stan made a gesture that, perhaps, to somebody somewhere, actually _meant_ something in regards to whatever the hell he was talking about. But sadly, Craig was just not that person today.

At Craig's blank expression, spoon still caught in his mouth, Stan sighed and glanced downwards with a tinge of red to his cheeks. It would be less retarded to just let it go and relapse into silence than it'd be to explain, but more than anything Stan hated to be misunderstood or have his point misconstrued. If there even _was_ a point to be had.

"The spoon," Stan made another gesture towards Craig's face that time. "It looked like the beat to 'Stayin' Alive'. The Bee Gees, you know?"

Craig didn't know. But hey, if Stan thought he was some kind of subconscious rhythm genius channeling through a plastic spoon, then by all means. "Huh." Craig tipped the spoon out of his mouth, inspected it keenly, before sticking it to the end of his nose, balancing carefully.

"What am I now?" Craig asked, startling a snort of laughter out of Stan.

"Trapeze artist," Stan supplied in a wry, dryly amused tone, shaking his head and spearing his broccoli unmercifully with his fork.

"And you're a barbarian," Craig murmured, mouth forming careful words as he tilted his head back to keep the spoon from falling. "Eat your food, don't play with it, Marsh."

Stan pulled a face then poked and pried the mutilated vegetable from the end of the fork with his fingernail. He let it plop unbecomingly onto his plate.

"They were teachin' us CPR in shop class..."

Stan started in with idle chatter, the acoustics of their friends' conversations in a lulling ebb and flow around them. Why shop class instead of Phys. Ed. or Health, he didn't know. They'd had the practice dummy propped up on the table saw platform, heads inches from the stationary steal blade as the CPR demo turned into a contest of who could tongue the dummy and leave the most spit behind for the next person.

"You're supposed to do the chest compressions to 'Stayin' Alive'. I think I got the song stuck in my head or something." Stan was still trying to validate his earlier, seemingly random comment, although Craig thought that line of conversation should've been pretty well on its way to dead by now.

The spoon fell off the end of Craig's nose, but he caught the utensil smoothly in his palm - which had less to do with reflex than the convenient placement of his hand at chest-level, _waiting_ for the spoon to drop.

Stan jabbed his fork at Craig like the barbarian wielder of utensils that he was, his mouth twitching in a reluctant half-grin. Craig returned the gesture with his own slightly slobbery instrument, reaching out across the table. The scoop of Craig's spoon slid intimately between the prongs of Stan's fork, tiny chunks of green caught in its teeth. Their non-silver silverware caught and clicked together perfectly.

Inexplicably, they both blushed, a prickly numbness shooting up Craig's arm where his spoon and Stan's fork touched.

Craig cleared his throat awkwardly and they both pulled out, pulled back, and didn't quite know where to look afterwards. A few seconds later Stan started up a nervous clicking with his fork against the edge of the table. Quick, fidgety motions.

Counting in his head, Craig took up the bottom beat with his spoon, the same tapping Stan had inquired about earlier, but now with steady intent. At Stan's quick upwards glance, Craig's grin spread. He pointedly looked back down at Stan's fork that faltered then gradually picked up Craig's beat, stayin' alive.


	2. Feet and Vegetables

Stan and Craig had unwittingly developed some kind of fixation for each other's mouth - what went _into_ the other's mouth - after that first lunch where they actually spoke directly to each other without the additional ribbing and melodrama of their opposing faction of friends as back up vocals.

Craig discovered Stan would not touch anything soggy and green on his plate. Green, in their school's cafeteria, was synonymous with soggy and wilted, like most anything else was greasy and burned to a charcoal-like consistency. Craig wondered what the hell kind of shit they did to deserve garbage like what was served on their plates being passed off as actual food after Chef died, other than more budget cut backs, even though everything in this school was practically held together by duct tape and spit.

The elusive school dietitian mandated students be provided with at least one serving of vegetables or fruit at lunch in the 'hot' food lunch line. So it wasn't enough that Stanley wouldn't eat his goddamn vegetables, but had to stab the shit out of them with his plastic fork until they were mangled corpses next to his pizza and French fries.

This ridiculous abuse of legumes was how Craig ended up rescuing his little green friends and popping them into his own mouth before Stan, the Barbarian Wielder of Utensils, could murder them at lunch everyday. And Stan...he would just _stare_ at Craig like he couldn't believe he was stealing food off his plate, or that he was actually putting that crap in his mouth. Craig spent most of lunchtime gnawing on his plastic spoon more than his actual food, though, not knowing how Stan could stand putting that greasy, nasty shit in _his_ mouth, unless he had a steel-lined stomach.

Stan would even fight him on his vegetables, like he knew he wasn't going to eat them, but he didn't want Craig taking them either, which was retarded since he was just going to mutilate them and throw them out anyway. Stan would stab at Craig's hand with his fork when he reached over to hijack his vegetables, or slide his tray away when he saw him coming, but that only encouraged Craig to play dirty.

Craig kicked Stan sharply in the shin after the douche had stabbed him pretty hard first with his goddamn fork, causing Stan to jump and curse, leaving his vegetables open for the easy taking.

"Goddamnit Craig! I kind of need that to play!" Stan yelled at him, likely referring to his mad football and running skills on the school's gay ass team – the one area in the entire school where funding _wasn't_ lacking.

"What, with your dick?" Eric Cartman taunted from two seats away without missing a beat.

" _No_ , Fatass!"

"Whatever, fag."

Craig stared and grinned with growing delight at how flustered and offended Stan had gotten then, red up to his hairline and sputtering incoherently at Cartman.

"Don't worry, baby. I'll rub it better," Craig interrupted with a disturbing coo, stretching out his foot to teasingly stroke the toe of his shoe slowly up and down the side of Stan's calf. Stan swung his head around to look at him, shocked and going even redder - if that were even possible - but amazingly didn't yell out or move his foot away.

Craig's foot abruptly stopped caressing Stan's leg and dropped down next to Stan's on the floor, the sides of their sneakers barely touching, but not moving. Stan's head ducked down, but Craig caught a shudder of thick, dark eyelashes when Craig licked his lips nervously, seeing Stan's blue eyes flick upwards and train unnervingly on his mouth.

Craig prodded his foot against Stan's beneath the table tentatively, curiously. A few seconds passed where they could just pass the moment off as nothing. Craig almost second-guessed himself and started to slide his foot away, until a delayed, answering nudge pushed against his shoe, stopping him from shifting back any further.

Craig ducked his own head quickly and felt a warm, tingling heat burst behind his ears and - even more inexplicably - between his legs. The reaction was so sudden and harshly unexpected that Craig jerked his foot back to his own side after all, but he couldn't stop stealing lingering glances at Stan, almost grinning at the subconscious jut of Stan's ridiculously plump bottom lip when Craig moved away.

They _both_ ended up mangling their food to death with their silverware that lunch hour.

Over the following days Craig started playing really dirty now that he knew how much innuendo got to Stan thanks to that fatass Cartman. They always managed to find themselves sitting across from each other at lunch now, which gave Craig ample opportunity to get Stan's panties in a bunch plus steal his vegetables on the side. Craig would nudge his foot against Stan's leg, letting his foot travel up higher and higher, switching his teasing touches to the inside of Stan's leg when he became accustomed to Craig's twisted footsie.

Craig became gradually more daring as his foot made its way even higher than the day before when Stan flinched back and kicked him away. Eventually, their under-the-table game of chicken advanced to the point where Craig even forgot to steal Stan's food, too busy inadvertently molesting him.

He went as far as to toe off one shoe, letting his socked foot trace the strong curve of Stan's calf muscle through the denim of his jeans. Craig stared observantly at Stan's lowered head, his hand in a white-knuckled grip around his fork. Slowly, his foot slid back down Stan's leg, his toe catching beneath the hem of Stan's pant leg and bunching the denim up as he moved his socked foot against Stan's bare leg. Except that Craig must have had a hole in his sock, because they both jumped when he touched him, rattling the table at the unexpected shock of skin to skin contact.

Stan made some kind of loud, strangled noise and got up so fast from the table that he nearly upended the entire damn thing onto Craig and everyone else sitting on his side. Stan's reaction was total win as he ran off and forgot his tray, but Craig didn't gloat because he'd fucked himself up too. He waited until the very last person at his table left for afternoon classes before grabbing up his and Stan's unfinished trays, holding them unsubtly at crotch-level as he quickly dumped the trays off and darted to class, gladly taking a tardy.

Their game took a hiatus the next day, Craig's hands and feet staying on his own side of the table. He could feel Stan's curious stare burning into him, but he couldn't make himself look up or straighten from hunching protectively over his lunch tray, not really eating much of anything. Craig always lost his appetite when he was upset, which was probably why he was so goddamn skinny since he lost his temper fairly often.

Stan, if anything, ate voraciously after the incident, even swallowing up his vegetables without even seeming to realize what he was shoveling into his mouth.

Craig was more surprised that he _liked_ someone, anyone, despite that person being another boy when he didn't even realize he swung that way – or any way, really. Craig generally didn't like people as a well-known fact, especially Stan and his douchebag group of friends, and only tolerated his own friends on occasion. Now he had to deal with the uncomfortable realization that he'd pitched a tent for the high school's football star and his childhood semi-rival. Craig didn't know what to do about how hard he'd gotten after his and Stan's last play, or how awkward and anxious he felt for the rest of the day afterwards.

After three days of stalemate, Stan broke first with a light nudge to Craig's foot, nodding at Craig's untouched plate when Craig looked up at him, startled, but shook his head and lowered it at Stan's silent inquiry.

Stan moved his foot away and Craig sighed, pressing his hands against his face with his elbows propped up on the table. He felt so sick and twisted up inside, tormenting himself by sitting across from Stan day after day, although thankfully the feeling didn't carry with him home, yet. He hadn't degenerated into locking himself in his room and moping, somewhat calmer and actually able to breathe when he wasn't sitting right across from Stan in their afternoon classes together and on the bus.

The tension wasn't as stifling as it was at the lunchroom table, but the _want_ was still there. If Craig was a little more emo, he'd probably paint his nails black and cut himself just to ease some of the pressure.

Craig nearly jumped out of his seat when he felt Stan's foot again, a low startled sound catching in his throat when he realized Stan was shoeless. Stan paused and Craig buried his face further in his hands, breathing harshly and trying not to, but he stiffened and bit back a moan when Stan's foot moved again, higher and higher on the inside of his leg until his toe brushed his knee, before he stopped again.

Craig felt trembling inside, ready to shake apart in an instant at the heat he could feel through their layers of clothing. But he didn't want to stop, only knowing how good this tension felt despite how miserable it made him. Or maybe just because Craig was a masochist.

Craig took a shuddering breath and nodded his head fractionally, spreading his legs apart and shifting his hips forward on the edge of the bench. He heard Stan's breath hitch from across the table, Craig unable to pick up his head and meet Stan's eyes. Craig nearly gave a shattered moan when Stan moved again, not hesitating as he slid his foot up between Craig's knees, the sides of his foot stroking Craig's inner thighs and going further until his heel was tucked snugly against Craig's crotch, the tips of his toes brushing against his belly.

Craig felt as taut as a hot wire, Stan's foot both easing and inflaming the unbelievable pressure between his legs. Stan couldn't possibly miss how hard he was, his cock stiffly curving into the arch of Stan's instep. Craig could look down and see Stan's toes against his lower belly, the edge of the table blocking his lap from an outsider's view, but he still hunched over to shield them further. Craig's hand shot underneath the table when Stan's foot...when it _kneaded_ him, his fingers clutching tightly around Stan's bare ankle.

Stan stilled at the touch, but Craig didn't let him pull away.

Instead, he gripped Stan's ankle tight, pulling him firmly against his dick and belly, and gave a single hard thrust into the bottom of Stan's foot, nearly coming all over himself. One more thrust and he would have, but then Stan was yanking his limb out of Craig's grip, pushing away from the table after awkwardly stuffing his foot back in his shoe and nearly tripping over himself as he made a hasty exit right out of the cafeteria.

Craig didn't care how it looked when he got up from the table just as suddenly, leaving his tray and everything behind as he scrambled up and took off after Stan, shoving his shirt down in front with heated cheeks.

Luckily Stan didn't get too far ahead and Craig saw him slip into the boys' bathroom. Craig felt a rush of vicious pride for getting him **that** worked up, until he remembered Stan had a nasty habit of throwing up on people when he was agitated a certain way. Craig didn't quite know if Stan was in there jacking off or hurling chunks. Maybe both.

Craig pushed inside, finding the door unblocked and the bathroom empty save for the stall on the very end that was tightly closed. There were no sounds of retching or water running, and Craig jolted when he heard a zipper go down, followed by some shifting and harsh breathing. He was...oh god he was, and over _Craig._

Craig had never been so achingly turned on in his life, reaching around and twisting the rusty lock on the door before practically throwing himself into the stall next to Stan's. He heard Stan go deathly still and silent when Craig's stall door banged shut, but Craig gave a frustrated sigh and kicked his foot out beneath the space between their stalls.

A few heavy seconds passed, but he soon felt the nudge of Stan's foot against his own, looking up when he saw fingers wiggling down at him from over the top of the stall. He reached up and spaced his fingers between Stan's, curling them awkwardly together as he basically flattened himself against the graffiti-covered wall.

Craig heard shuffling on the other side, but didn't feel Stan's foot move away, so he knew he had to be arranging his clothes - hopefully _not_ putting them back on. Not wanting to be left behind with this horrible gnawing in his gut, Craig fumbled for his jeans, the sound of his zipper going down unbelievably loud in the echoing space. He shoved his hand down the front of his underwear, fisting his throbbing dick and giving a low, painful moan as he squeezed himself tightly, shuffling and trying impossibly to get closer to Stan. Stan's fingers clenched around his, both of them stretching to reach even though Craig was a little bit taller.

Craig had his cheek against the wall with his eyes closed as he stroked himself desperately, hoping the graffiti didn't rub off on his skin and he'd have to walk around with a reversed 'fuck' on his face or half of someone's phone number.

He heard an encouraging moan on the opposite side and dug his nails into the back of Stan's hand while he thrust shamelessly into his fist, feeling the echoing grip and hearing the same wet slapping of flesh against sweaty palms. They were basically humping the wall trying get at each other, but weren't quite ready to remove that protective barrier yet.

"Fuck!" Craig cried out, hips jerking as he came all over the wall and his hand. There was an answering swear and jolt as one of them banged their knee against the stall, and he shivered as Stan's hand squeezed his tightly and slowly slipped back over to his side.

Craig shakily waded up handfuls of brittle, abrasive toilet paper and cleaned his mess, flushing the evidence away before collecting himself and sheepishly climbing out of his stall. His actions had been presumably copied in the next stall over, he and Stan meeting up and the sinks and washing their hands. They avoided looking at each other's red faces and their own guilty reflections in the mirrors.

Stan twisted the dripping faucet handle and dried his hands off with a paper towel, crumpling and tossing the soggy brown paper into the overflowing waste basket with a perfect shot. Freaking show off. Craig's hands remained dripping at his sides, clenching up when Stan took uncertain, shuffling footsteps towards the door.

"Stan?" Craig asked, his voice not sounding like his own. Stan's name came out strained and broken, but also anxiously hopeful.

Craig had never been in this situation before, and didn't know what came next, especially when both of them were supposedly straight. He didn't know if Stan would just ball him up and throw him away like trash now too, both of them having crossed lines and his heterosexual jock image more important than weird pale angry Craig and this sudden homo phase they were going through.

Craig didn't know if there could be something more than a phase.

Stan turned and approached him, reaching out with his fingertips sliding against Craig's cheek, but Craig flinched away like he'd expected Stan to hit him instead. Craig wasn't a pussy and started his own fair share of fights, but anything negative from Stan at that point was guaranteed to hurt too much when Craig was feeling still so stupidly vulnerable and attracted to him, even moreso after they'd come together.

Stan's dark eyebrows furrowed, looking hurt himself at the way Craig had recoiled from his touch, but they were both too afraid to speak and air this thing between them. Craig's look crushed him, blue eyes so fucking big and dark against his pale skin, hair a mess and all over the place beneath his stupid lopsided chullo hat. They were quickly approaching some unwritten time limit where, if a course of action wasn't taken soon, the moment would be lost for good, and they would probably never be able to speak or look at each other again.

So Stan surprised the _hell_ out of them both when he jumped at Craig without any warning, arms clamping around his waist as Craig faltered backwards and banged his hip against the edge of the sink.

"Goddamnit Marsh!" Craig yelped, pinned between Stan and the tilting sink ledge, getting the back of his shirt all wet. Stan didn't seem to notice or care, his eyes intense and focused as he curved his hand - thankfully just washed - against Craig's jaw and moved his face towards Craig's with alarming intent.

"W-Whoa!" Craig slapped his hand against Stan's chest and shoved back enough to stop him before he slathered his mouth over Craig's. Stan was too strong to be completely removed...but Craig wasn't necessarily trying to push him _off_ , just slow him down a bit.

"What?" Stan asked, uncertain and annoyed as his chest tensed underneath Craig's hand.

"Give a guy some fucking warning first, christ," Craig grumbled, but he was looking hungrily at Stan's mouth, sort of in awe that his soft-looking lips wanted to attach themselves to his own.

And he wanted it. Craig wanted to kiss him so bad he could practically _feel_ the soft sponginess of Stan's bottom lip gripped between his fucked up teeth, and taste the hot flickering wetness of Stan's tongue sweeping into his mouth. Craig shifted and his hips slotted against Stan's, both of them unable to hide or deny how much they were turned on again.

Craig's mouth ghosted over Stan's cheek in not quite a kiss, and trembled softly against his ear with his careful, slow breaths.

"I don't want my…my first _kiss_ to be in here, okay?" Craig murmured, flushing with the admittance, and feeling like such a girl. He just didn't want the impression of his first kiss with Stan, his first kiss with _anybody,_ being tempered with cracked moldy tile, sticky floors, and stale piss.

"So surprise me, stud." Craig grinned tentatively, his hand now resting against Stan's chest, not pushing anymore.

"Yeah," Stan agreed, his voice amazingly husky.

He rocked his hips once against Craig's, a threat and promise before he peeled himself away, Craig's wet handprint pressed right into the center of his chest. He threw Craig a heated look before he unlocked the door and stiffly marched himself out of the bathroom, letting the door swing shut behind him.

Craig stared after him for a long moment, half slumped over the sink, and stunned. He picked himself up seconds later and ran at the door, turning the lock, and didn't even make it into a stall as he unzipped his jeans and desperately jacked himself off until he came for the second time in that nasty ass bathroom.


	3. Flash Cards

Craig and Stan were sprawled lazily in Stan's room on the floor, freshly showered and shirtless with a pile of abnormally large cards scattered around them like a game of strip poker had spontaneously combusted when they weren't looking.

They shuffled the remaining deck, unconcerned.

"Neck," Stan said resolutely, calmly setting aside the glossy illustrated card he'd acquired from their gradually decreasing stack, although he couldn't quite keep the flush from his cheeks or the hitch from his throat as he distractedly raked his thumbnail against corner of the overturned card.

Craig waited until Stan's blue eyes grudgingly lifted and met his own, Stan's thick eyebrows furrowed a little helplessly as he swallowed and tilted his head stiffly, his eyes darting away again.

Calmly, hands tucked in his lap, Craig leaned over and touched his mouth to the side of Stan's neck, swallowing up the rapid pulse beating against his lips as he tasted sultry, clean skin and the soap Stan had used in his shower. Unfairly, just to get Stan's panties in even more of a bunch, he swept the lightly tanned skin with a slow drag of tongue before he leaned back, face impassive.

"Oh god..." Stan shivered, his eyes blackened in a way that made Craig curse the no-wandering-hands rules they'd established at the beginning of their game, otherwise his hands would so totally be down Stan's grey sweatpants gettin' a handful right now.

Craig flicked over the next card, his eyes flashing with a mixed expression of interested disgust and amusement. "Toes?"

The flash cards Stan had come by from nabbing them from Kyle's younger brother in a fit of inspiration that was next to impossible trying to explain to anyone else. Ike had been in the delayed process of throwing them out - much too smart for the need for flash cards, in English anyway, since he was very nearly in the same grade they were. Stan and Craig, however, weren't uncreative enough not to find _some_ use for the cards, labeled and cartoonishly illustrated with various body parts of the human anatomy.

Stan barked out an uncomfortable laugh at Craig's declaration, his toes already curling and his bare stomach doing a completely distracting little squirm. Craig grabbed his ankle and hauled him forward by the foot without delay, Stan yelping and flopping gracelessly onto his back as he scrabbled out for balance, sending the cards flying.

"Hey! It's...uh. It's _my_ turn, Craig," Stan huffed, irritated with laughter as he tried to pull his foot away from Craig's tight hold.

"You wanna suck on my toes, Marsh?" Craig's voice was low, amused.

"N-No..."

"All right then."

Craig propped Stan's heel against his chin for a second, Stan's hands flying up to clap over his eyes, shoulders already shaking as he groaned his resistance. He was ticklish as _hell_ , and the twist of nervous excitement in his gut made the anticipation only that much worse.

Craig ran his tongue over the arch of Stan's foot, hard and slow so it should've been less ticklish, but had to pull his face back to prevent himself from getting kicked in the nose when Stan bucked with a sharp yelp and tried to twist his foot away.

"Goddamnit Craig! D-Don't!" Craig couldn't tell if Stan was laughing or starting to get pissed off, but the angle he had with Stan's legs in a wide, open sprawl and looking downwards made him think it was very likely something more in the middle.

Craig considered pulling some sort of WWE move on Stan, tossing him over onto his stomach and yanking his leg back as he sat down on hard on Stan's spine...but that'd sorta be degenerating from their original purpose. Which was to _eventually_ find the lips/mouth flash card and get in their first real kiss together. It was nerve-wracking as hell, being this deliberate with an overabundance of gay, but disturbingly exciting at the same time.

Unfortunately, the cards were only intended for children ages three and up - not perverted teenagers in the experimental phase - so there hadn't been many chances to have their mouths in really interesting places yet.

Craig stopped licking him and Stan gave a giggling sigh, his foot twitching every time Craig exhaled and his breath touched him. "I swear to god...if you kick me I'm raping you with a ruler," Craig muttered, rolling his eyes as Stan hiccuped and nodded. Dork.

Hopefully Stan didn't have any weird foot diseases from the locker rooms (damned jock) but they'd both showered - although not together - before they started playing, so it was less disgusting than if Stan had just come in from running ten miles in his old, dirty socks. Craig calmly kissed the pad of Stan's big toe, Stan's knee bending and forcing Craig to lean forward to follow him, but he didn't kick or jerk away, so Craig's thin lips met the next little piggy, and the next, all the way down to Stan's slightly crooked little toe.

Stan was breathing deeply, too deeply, and his hands had slid from his eyes to the sides of his face in an unconscious, mock-parody of horror, watching Craig cautiously. His mouth twitched, ready to break out in hysterical laughter at the slightest tickle, but Craig was being careful not to linger too long. Still, one foot was enough, and Stan sat up quickly and scooted away before Craig could get to the other one. Craig's grip loosened but didn't leave his ankle, leaving them both sitting awkwardly close with their knees occasionally jostling each other's.

Craig suddenly reached for Stan's butt without warning and caused the jock to give a distressingly piercing yelp, blushing furiously when Craig only yanked his hand back to display the card caught between two fingers, eyebrow cocked curiously.

"Fingers," Stan groaned, reading the card and the play of Craig's lips as he tried not to laugh at Stan for screaming like a five year old girl at a Jonas Brothers' concert.

Eager at the chance for revenge from Craig's toe-attack, Stan reached for the hand not currently wrapped too-warm around his ankle, pressing parted lips to Craig's wrist briefly, sort of wanting to bite at that thin, delicate flesh and tracery of blue veins beneath. At Craig's low, wordless murmur, Stan started his kisses by first licking the salt from the tip of Craig's index finger - a warm lancing of tongue, followed with a sharp nip and a sweetly soft kiss to counteract the sting.

"Don't go getting fancy on me, Marsh," Craig said breathlessly, eyes stuck on Stan's pretty mouth, the flash of straight white teeth and pink tongue, and the roll of Stan's blue eyes - a shade lighter than Craig's own - at the way Craig still insisted on calling him by his last name.

Stan finished all five fingers with a flourish - sliding his hollowed-out mouth down Craig's thumb and pressing his teeth lightly against the base of the last joint, catching on a hangnail as he memorized Craig's thumbprint with his tongue. His eyes were deliberate in looking up into Craig's the whole time, gaze smoky and half-lidded.

"...Shit..." Craig cursed, feeling a little bit stupidly wide-eyed and squirmy after that play. _Touché._

Stan laughed contently, squeezing Craig's hand and dropping it before they completely fagged out into hand-holding. Still, he couldn't help looking quietly pleased with himself either, until his gaze shifted thoughtfully as he picked up the card closest to his hand. "Er...um. Hip."

Craig had gone twice in a row, so it was still his turn by default. He glanced quickly down the plain, undefined length of Craig's skinny torso to his narrow hips - glances practiced and perfected in locker rooms for hidden queermos getting in their eye candy without coming out of observation with a blackened eye. Not that Stan was one of _those_ types, but just maybe how he imagined those looks to be, in theory.

It was hard not reaching out and running his hands over Craig's shoulders, down his sides and waist to take hold of his hips, and Craig certainly wasn't helping, sitting there looking both bored and expectant.

Stan thought it'd be easier just to tackle him, bite the shit out of his hip for that look, and just be done with his turn, rather than go about the enactment all slow and premeditated. But that was just possibly the football player in his blood. Not that he'd bitten anyone in recent memory, but Craig kinda made him want to all the same.

"How d'you want me?" Craig broke Stan's zoning out with a deliberate purr and straight face, practically giddy at the way Stan went red to his hairline.

He let go of Stan's ankle and caught himself back on his hands, casually letting his legs fall open in a shameless invitation he wasn't too certain he really wanted to give out. He was risking Stan getting in a nut-shot and bolting for it, but the way Stan's eyes kept darting from Craig's perilous waistline to an undetermined patch on the carpet to the left and back again had Craig suppressing laughter, and maybe just a little bit hard in his pants.

"Slut," Stan growled, hot and offended, and maybe just a little bit delighted.

"You say the sweetest things, lovemuffin," Craig cooed, casually fingering the edge where his pants met skin low on his hips. Stan started at his bland tone and the weird-ass endearment, but he eased up by laughing distractedly at Craig's brazenness, his eyes catching and holding on his target, unable to look away that time.

Stan braced his hands on either side of Craig's waist, kneeling between his legs and hunching down so their faces weren't too close together, so he didn't have to look him in the eyes. What the fuck, flash cards. What...the...fuck. But still, Stan counted himself lucky that there hadn't been a 'spleen' card in the mix, or else this game would have gotten ridiculously messy and uncomfortable real fast. Not that it wasn't already.

Stan dropped down to his forearms to get closer without having to contort himself, nearly headbutting Craig for his troubles. But once lips met skin, pushing Craig's fingers out of the way with a shuddering breath, Stan relaxed marginally and moved his mouth over Craig's flat stomach to nibble at the sharp, angled curve of Craig's hipbone.

Craig's hips did this entirely unexpected Shakira-like roll, convulsing as he gripped Stan's hair with a smothered sound that took Stan a few seconds to work out was laughter. Ticklish, huh.

Not to be outdone, Stan pinned his hands against Craig's writhing hips, leaving room for his mouth in the long spread between thumb and forefinger as he kissed him, focused despite Craig's increasingly desperate sensitivity.

"Nnhh- **fuck**...Goddamnit...S-Stan!"

Craig's use of his Christian name (finally) was what did it for him. Stan didn't stop the pressure of his lips against Craig's pale, skinny body or the firm hold on his hips, officially throwing the game by raking his tongue over Craig's stomach, poking at the dip of his navel with his tongue and kissing more than what was determined on his card of choice.

Craig moaned and shivered, body becoming limp and pliable even as his hand clenched in Stan's hair, his other hand squeezing at Stan's shoulder in not particularly believable opposition to the breach of gameplay. Stan stubbornly lipped his way up Craig's stomach and chest, tonguing the dark wisps of wiry hair just beginning to sprout along the way. Craig moaned again, this time sounding close to broken as his legs slid over Stan's hips, hands urgent in his hair.

Stan nuzzled underneath Craig's jaw when he reached that far, kissing and biting at the skin there until it was wet and red. Craig's throat vibrated in a wordless growl and his fingers yanked in warning, but otherwise made no other resistance towards Stan marking him or fucking up their meticulous education of each other's anatomy through the use of those flash cards.

Fucking cheater, that's what he was.

Stan lifted his head and paused with his lips hovering just over Craig's, the differential blues of their eyes shifting and darkening with arousal as they panted, weirdly exhausted from a few scattered kisses. Before that essential contact could be made, though, Craig was shoving Stan away, pushing him off as his hand skidded on the crumpled, scattered flash cards that slipped under his palm.

" _Finish the goddamn game_ ," Craig hissed, voice angry and hoarse as he tucked his legs defensively close, curiously prudish after his previously wanton performance.

Instead of taking offense, Stan just snorted in sardonic amusement, curving his palm over the back of Craig's hand against his chest until the other pulled away, leaving Stan clutching a card there instead.

Stan took one look at the black print and tossed the card aside, mouth crinkling. "There's no way I'm kissing _that_."

Craig didn't know what _that_ was, hopefully not a spleen, but his focus shifted when Stan grabbed his wrist and tugged him upwards onto his feet, backing him up towards the bed before he'd even gotten his footing.

"What the f... Don't _manhandle_ me, bitch," Craig sputtered, his arm hooking around Stan's neck to keep from falling before his back hit the floor instead of the bed.

"Don't bitch at me, bitch," Stan taunted, face tucked against Craig's neck as they dropped half on, half off Stan's bed, grunting at the jostling impact.

They laid there for a long while after getting their breath back, silently counting and matching up heartbeats where their bare chests touched and pressed together. Craig's arm draped loosely over Stan's back with the other flung up over his head, knees bracketing Stan's hips in a way that had Craig wondering since _when_ had he become the bottom bitch anyway?

Slowly, gradually, they inched themselves onto the bed, as tentative and scarily intimate as their game had been at the beginning. They rolled until they were facing each other, framing each other's bodies with hands and limbs that were ungainly and unlikely, but fit perfectly together in the most unexpected way.

Stan's hands slid slowly over Craig's back, soothing and hypnotizing, until Stan made a low, startled sound and peeled something off of Craig's back. Craig twisted his head back to look, twisting it right back around at Stan's bark of laughter, as he held up the elusive mouth card.

"Well, at least it wasn't a 'kick me' sign," Stan mused weakly, letting the card flutter to the floor behind him.

They avoided looking directly at each other, doing a damn fine job of pretending they weren't each half naked and laying wrapped up in another guy's arms, bodies still thrumming from all those kisses and waiting for that final damning one. A nervous drumming of fingertips took up against Craig's hip where Stan's hand was pressed, Craig's eyes shifting to Stan's face, mouth tight in the effort not to crack a grin at the depth of their mutual avoidance.

They could lay right here forever, pretending neither saw that last card, until inevitability of attraction sank in and they finished the game by default...and then what? Reshuffle the deck and start over? Burn Ike's flash cards and never speak of this again?

But Craig realized with a start that it was _his turn_ , the game still in play.

The entire time he was waiting for Stan, Stan was waiting for him, getting increasingly red in the face and hard in the pants, tense with the effort not to shift against him, or away. And it wasn't like either were inclined to _ask_ , the rules clear and obviously made to be broken from the beginning. Or so proved their wandering hands and lips.

"Aw, sweetheart," Craig crooned, moving his thigh in a way that had to be _really_ awesome because Stan didn't headbutt him at the saccharine taunting, but just gasped instead. Or maybe he just secretly liked being called names.

Before Craig could find out for sure, he was holding Stan's carefully between his hands, his lips pursed against Stan's bottom lip. He took the plump flesh between his slightly crooked teeth, sucking until it was red and plump-er, and tasted the salty, boyish flavor of him.

Stan moaned and his mouth opened up without provocation, his hands on Craig's waist, pulling him closer as their lips connected, sucking and licking until their bodies were magically stacked and aligned. They rubbed and slid together in an extremely heated manner that a proper first kiss had no business being, especially when there had been pre-school flash cards involved.


	4. Rock Paper Scissors

Maybe if they were trying a little _less_ harder trying to devour each other's faces then Craig might have been able to delude himself into thinking he wasn't wanting this connection as badly as he did.

On a pure physical level, it felt good. God, it felt so fucking good having Stan rutting up between his legs, the most horrific whimpers escaping one of their throats in the wet gasps between breaths that came secondary, almost resentfully to those hungry kisses.

Their mouths were open and crushed together, teeth baring down on the back of lips and lending a powerfully bruising pressure that just barely resisted cutting into flesh. Craig not-whimpered and curled a hand against Stan's ear, fingertips digging into thick black hair while his leg hooked over Stan's slender hip in his personal best impression of a human leech pretty much ever.

Craig had never tasted another person's tongue before, aside from his own, but then again it was impossible to know what he tasted like when his taste buds had gotten used to each other eons ago. Stan though...the taste of him was slick, if 'slick' could possibly be a flavor, and slightly metallic, but the texture was what was captivating. Roughness under the _slick_ , smooth and ridged at the same time, and the way his tongue wrapped around Craig's and how he tugged at him with teeth was _holyfuckingshit_ , if that could be a texture.

"Niiiyygguh," came Craig's reply to no particular question being asked, his pitch raising and sinking back down into an unintelligible gurgle that was almost worse than the whimpering had been. He felt Stan's laughter inside his mouth, his tongue thick with the shuddering vibrations. He sighed when the unbelievable pressure eventually eased off, tapering into one wet, hollow kiss after another.

Their tongues darted into each other's mouths during after and starting one of those kisses like some kind of passionate Whack-A-Mole, jabbing and pushing at each other in a warped contest that was way too sexy and delirious to be any contest at all.

Their mouths had difficulty parting long after the mind-numbing fever receded and they could look each other in the eyes with startling clarity, evasion the creeping issue at hand, because what the fuck could you possibly say when a first kiss led to being tongue-fucked and dry-humped into utter, melting submission?

Not much, apparently, other than raising and shifting body parts obligingly as Stan pulled the covers up over them, tenting their bodies in erotic seclusion from their heads, or whatever was left of Craig's head after the sort of making out that effectively ruined his unlikely candidacy for celibacy or monkhood. He had thought he'd like to keep his options open, because you never just fuckin' knew.

Craig tried not to moan and be so obvious about spreading his legs to let Stan's hips sit flush against his own, their sweatpants taut and uncomfortably hot.

Stan's lips grazed the side of his mouth and moved on, blue eyes fluttering in self-conscious bliss as they pressed together pale cheek-to-dimpled cheek, faking the act of breathing to cover up breathing each other in. Craig's heartbeat felt sickening, unaccustomed to anxiety especially in the onset of Stan's harassingly calm acceptance. He felt safe though...twisted and turned around by the solidity of Stan's thighs and forearms pressed into his very edges, lips sliding down to mouth at the side of Craig's throat until his eyes closed and his head tipped back in breathless surrender.

The pants were too much, but Craig wasn't in any rush to pursue this...thing, any quicker than their heated chemistry was already forcing on them. Raw, deliberate sex was happening, oh yes, and it was gonna be fucking _sweet_ , but god. God.

Stan's athletically callused hands ghosted over Craig's chest ribs and sides, sweeping back up again and chasing the trembling vibrations with his fingertips. Craig's lips buried themselves against the salty curvature of Stan's neck and shoulder, the corners twitching compulsively downwards as he tried to capture and rein in the desire that made his own body feel scarily unfamiliar and awkward.

Frankly, he toyed with the idea of breaking down and crying like some lost little girl just for _some_ kind of relief or outlet, even though that would accomplish nothing save ensuring that he would never get laid again in his life.

"Dude," Stan said, his voice managing to be amused, tentative, understanding and everything else Craig shouldn't have been able to read this much into, but did.

Stan rolled to the side and eased up, allotting Craig time to pull himself together. Except that everything in Craig was screaming to be pulled apart and refitted into this image of _them_. He surged upwards and kissed Stan viciously before his brain could even register the point of contact - which was actually no part _not_ touching right the fuck now.

Stan provided no resistance as Craig situated himself on top of him, uncomplaining when sharp knees dug into his hips or fingers plucked to the point of tearing at his waistband. His sweats were shoved down to his knees before Craig apparently decided that little coverage was good enough for what he wanted, Stan's boxer shorts having been yanked down right along with his pants.

Craig jammed a knee into Stan's rib as he pulled off his own clothing like they were some kind of fiendish death trap, assimilating the flush of bare skin beneath his own. He was stunned and quietly taken by the sudden, graphic exposure of their want.

Stan was still infuriatingly calm for having just about as much experience as Craig in all this, though quietly apprehensive for the dark look in Craig's eyes that bordered fear and more want than Stan had ever had directed towards him before. Or even a singular body part, since Craig was staring rather intently at his dick, flushed alongside his own.

Craig was off in his own world, dazed at the expanse of so much lean, toned flesh cradled between his thighs. His hands spread out slowly over Stan's belly, fingertips brushing over his ribcage as he gave an experimental thrust forwards, their eyes going simultaneously black.

Craig shuddered, head listing backwards with his mouth stunned and gaping open. His eyes were barely shut as he rocked their hips together, absorbed in so much _feel good_. A flush worked its way up Craig's chest to his throat, exploding over his cheeks as he gasped and swallowed for breath.

"Jesus..." Stan murmured, sucking up air. He was almost afraid to touch Craig incase the other lashed out and bit his hand off at his wrist like a rabid dog, or – even worse – stopped entirely. Craig seemed to forget Stan was there, which was actually more arousing than offensive, except for where Stan was dying to get his hands involved and messy.

Craig's thighs twitched under Stan's sudden, but steady touch, his fingers sliding their way inwards as they dug into the taut muscles straining Craig's inner thighs and thumbed the crease where his legs joined at an open junction.

Craig bucked forward, his knees knocking against Stan's sides as he practically took a flying leap out of his skin. Testily, he smacked Stan's hands away, glaring as his cheek tipped against his right shoulder to frown down at his better-looking lookalike.

"No hands, dude," Craig said, like he was reiterating their earlier rules from the card game, instead of being really close to coming all over both of them.

He thought about it...how a few more tight, tense pushes would send him over the theoretical edge, splayed and open in a way he'd never been for anybody. Stan would see him come, see every pulse of seed that came from the wet, slick slit of his cock, see every shiver twitch and sound that was the byproduct of a really fucking super orgasm that Craig had no control over.

He felt a tightening behind the base of his balls, his breath hitching and drawing out slowly as he teetered back from that edge, self-conscious and flushed.

"So...we're doing this...?" Stan asked, his tone exaggeratedly slow and pitched at the end, because he really didn't know after all. He'd thought it'd been a given several times over the course of the past several blissed-out minutes, but now he wasn't so certain.

Craig was a weird fruit, that's all he could be relatively sure of at that particular moment. Probably with big, annoying seeds and a bitter peel, if one wanted specifics.

"Fuck," Craig muttered, scrubbing a hand through his hair then letting it drop as he shrugged his shoulders, more loosening up than a true expression of uncertainty. "Yeah...yeah."

"...Wanna rock-paper-scissors for the top?"

Stan was wholly somber, and the way his suggestion was so tentative and unselfishly offered made Craig's brain break a little, trying to wrap his mind around that magnitude of pure awesome.

"Dude. Yes. But...it'd have to be the gay version," Craig compromised, biting his lip at the subtle way Stan tilted his head for clarification. "Y'know. Fisting, bitch slap, finger scissoring."

Craig assisted the explanation with helpful hand motions - making a fist, then a flat hand with fingers pressed together, and finally a simple 'scissoring' motion to clarify the last.

Stan's startled bark of laughter was starting to become curiously recognizable to Craig. The soft, warm rush in his chest that accompanied the sound also newly nostalgic.

"What the fuck, Craig... You're not fistin' me."

"Then you'd better not lose."

Their first round ended up with Stan throwing a closed fist, Craig countering with a bitch slap. Stan was warily disbelieving of the alteration in original gameplay to format their hopeful lifestyle choice, which was _why_ he was so blankly startled when Craig's open hand caught him in an - albeit light - smack across the cheek.

Stan looked so entirely offended, so taken back that they could only stare at each other for a heavy, stupidly stunned moment. Until, that was, Craig made some kind of painful snorting noise, chewing his lip before he reached down to drop a consolatory kiss to Stan's soft mouth. "Bitch."

After a brief recovery period and adjustment, round two resulted with both hands displaying the universal 'v' for scissors. There was a minor pause given, which immediately exploded into a scuffle of flailing hand-slapping that further degenerated into loud squabbling, aided with a tangled struggle from the sheet wrapped around Craig's hips and Stan's legs.

Craig had an unfair advantage, on top with Stan's pants still caught around his knees, but Stan, of course, had the leverage of lean muscle and experience from his extracurricular activities. Their limited skirmish ended when they nearly poked out each other's eyes, eardrums, and/or nostrils, both panting as Craig stretched out over atop Stan's temporarily inert body, wrists caught up in both his hands.

The situation was too ridiculous for either to muster up deserved glares or twitching grins, Craig slowly sinking against Stan's damp chest instead as their eyes and mouths locked in a soft, breathless moment.

It was startling how idyllic unprompted moments of considerable gay could be. Or perhaps maybe just because they were naked.

"Best...two outta three?" Stan murmured against Craig's mouth, so fucking intent that Craig couldn't keep the crinkles from his eyes nor the laughter from his throat in response.

"Fuck...yes." Craig's amusement morphed into a low moan, disgruntled as he tugged his wrists out of Stan's hands, definitely not trying for a handicap since this game was riskier than their last. "But get your pants off."

The tangled sweats were annoying and chafing Craig nearly as much as Stan, and he definitely didn't want to get kneed in the junk when Stan was given sufficient reason to get out of them quickly. He wasn't thinking the command especially kinky, but Stan's dick twitching beneath his thigh and the other's startled grunt said otherwise.

Craig would graciously not be the one to dissuade Stan or his smaller, perkier version.

He wasn't giving up the sheet, though, clutching the material to his waist as he forced Stan to work around – beneath – him, not giving up his seat either, straddled comfortably over Stan's hips. Stan growled and finally managed to scoot/kick his pants and boxers into an uncomfortable pile at his feet, setting his hands on Craig's waist because he damn well fucking could if he wanted.

That stance adjusted shortly after, considering Stan needed at least one hand free to finish the game. Craig made no comment, grinning and ready.

"One...two... _three_."

A breath and then: "Fucking shit!"

Stan held up two fingers triumphantly, his scissors cutting smartly through Craig's inefficient bitch slap.


	5. Forking

"Goddamnit, I want a rematch!" Craig demanded, already beginning to shy away from his spot across Stan's hips.

"Nope," Stan replied bluntly, fisting the sheet around Craig's waist with casual intent as he sat up and snuggled back against his headboard, getting comfortable. Craig resisted, colorfully, but Stan had practice blocking out sounds he didn't want to hear over the years from his ornery whorebag sister, Kyle's bitchy mom, and Cartman – just to name a few.

Craig's bitching and pleading fell on unsympathetic ears, becoming more aggressive in pitch after several minutes of Stan's unresponsiveness. He cut off abruptly when Stan finally _looked_ at him, gaze steady and somehow disappointed.

 _You came up with the rules, yeah?_ Stan demanded with that one look, lips closed firmly together. _Implemented them, smacked me, and damn well would be fisting me right now if I'd lost. Don't be a bitch, Craig._

Craig's mouth trembled in automatic denial, but he was unable to make a valid refusal since Stan hadn't actually voiced any of this - having been plenty clear in his weighted stare - so Craig might as well be talking to thin air.

And he knew the jackass was right, goddamnit.

When Stan released his sheet, Craig felt like his spine, his invisible strings, whatever was keeping him upright had been cut, and he had to fight not to slump over and be a dramatic emo queen. Oh god, what had possessed him to play the 'gay version' of rock-paper-scissors in the first place? Other than wanting to get in Stan's pants, that was, but surely there could have been easier ways. That's what alcohol or bondage or date rape drugs were for, right?

Stan had no sympathy for Craig whatsoever, his eyebrows lifted dismissively and lids half lowered as he licked his fingers in a few deliberate swipes of his tongue, dragging Craig forward with an arm hooked around his waist.

Craig came grudgingly, his hands flying up to push against Stan's shoulders, but with no real force behind them. If a pout could be a person's demeanor, than Craig was embodying that expression without sticking his lip out further than what could pass as a wobbly frown. He bit back a sigh as he knelt up over Stan's lap, tossing an arm around his neck to balance the one around his waist. He imagined Stan thought to keep him from toppling over, or - more likely - to prevent him from running off without his punishment.

Personally, Craig believed fingering to be one step removed from fucking. Even though they were inexorably drawn towards that conclusion, he still felt that there should have been more time, or at least considerably fewer thought processes involved. It was too deliberate. He shouldn't have to think about this shit - like getting a shot or having a bandaid ripped off his arm and taking no few hairs with the sticky backing. Fast and painful and over in minutes _._

Stan's hand - the one which fingers he'd licked - found Craig's ass and slid inwards like he belonged, delving into his crack and probing out that tiny pucker almost as if he'd had practice, or thought about finger fucking Craig, or _anyone_ , for a really, really long time.

"Freak," Craig groaned, his face going numb with blood loss while his ass and back clenched up rigidly.

He was tight-lipped and tense, determined not to like the feeling of Stan's hands on him, and not intentionally trying to drill a hole in Stan's chest with his dick. Maybe if Stan was a little less of a team player and could stand to bend the rules at least once in a while...but then again he was still getting his for that smack earlier. Craig had to count himself fortunate that he hadn't lost to fisting.

Craig grunted as two blunt fingertips probed at his tight asshole, pushing inside without hesitation or teasing. "Stan..." Craig gasped, feeling a punched-out sensation in his gut as Stan's fingers twisted and pushed upwards relentlessly, making that goddamn scissoring motion that had his head quickly reeling.

Craig gave a shattered moan before clamping his mouth shut, startled and achingly uncomfortable. His nails scratched over Stan's shoulder blades as he squirmed and uselessly tried to avoid the maddening pressure against his ass, _in_ his ass.

The moment where Craig felt like he couldn't take the fingering any longer, only seconds into the act, Stan miraculously eased off, though a fingertip still remained inside Craig, rotating slowly.

"Jesus _christ_ ," Craig expelled violently with a tight burst of air, digging his chin into the top of Stan's head, and tried to smother him with his chest. He was shaken and feeling drained, wondering how the _hell_ they were to partake in gay sex when that just that little bit had been entirely **not** fun.

Stan finally pulled his finger all the way out, looking upwards to gauge Craig's reaction with no visible sign of remorse himself. Stan was _goddamn_ lucky Craig was a saint and didn't try to poke his eyes out again for that - not to say he wasn't extremely tempted.

Craig's first thought, since Stan seemed to want feedback, was a simple, pained 'Ow' or perhaps an even more hearty 'Spit doesn't work, you jackass!' But he just...ended up squeezing Stan's stupid fat head in his hands, leaned down, and kissed him hard and angry without comment or voicing his well-deserved complaints.

Craig had never been kissed like this, or so much, until Stan had come along out of nowhere...save for his late Aunt Gertie. She'd been in the habit of kissing him nastily on the lips, rubbing in her garish orange lipstick with her tacky thumb that had him seriously considering an occupation with no human contact whatsoever. Hence the deliberation that had made monkhood so appealing.

There was something in the way they touched, the way their mouths fit together that just went _click_. Not an actual physical sound, unless it was counting the awkward moments their teeth cracked together, or the embarrassingly loud sucking vacuum their lips made when they parted for breath and came back together nearly as quickly. But more like they were made to fit together, or something eternally gay like that.

Craig couldn't say for sure when his world had upended and he'd been left inexplicably staring up at Stan as the other guy tongued him and tipped him onto his back, hand stealing between Craig's legs to jack him off roughly.

Their mouths were gasping and open, gaps all around so they could kiss without breaking for air, not losing a second. Craig yelped out in electric shock, hips twitching convulsively when Stan caught him on the edge of coming, so goddamn close. But right when he was about to come, he'd feel a twinge of over-sensitivity at his peak that kept him from spilling over every fucking time.

Craig's legs caught against Stan's hips and waist, pretty sure it was a simple equation of whenever Stan was between his legs - a factor that was becoming increasingly commonplace - it was inevitable that Craig's legs would wind up and lock around him. He pushed his hips into Stan's hand, whining in frustration when his dick twitched, burning with need, but his body still resisted.

"Why won't you come?" Stan murmured thoughtlessly out loud to himself against Craig's mouth, feeling the heat of Craig's answering flush. Craig growled, straining, before he gave a disgruntled noise and shoved Stan's hands away at his wrists.

Stan let go and slowly sat back between his legs, hands leaning on Craig's thighs, and looked down at him for a long moment. At his face, not his still-hard, defective dick, which was almost...which _was_ worse.

Craig gave Stan a nervous, stink-eyed glare as he curled his arms into his chest, becoming wildly uncomfortable and defensive at Stan's silent staring.

"What," he snapped, eyes narrowing even further at Stan's unreadable expression.

"Nothing."

"F...Fuck you! Don't give me that shit!" Craig snarled in humiliation, twisting his body to turn over and take himself away from Stan's callous scrutiny. He sucked in a sharp breath when Stan's strong hands pinned him down at his hips with inhuman ease, the look in Stan's strange, dark eyes pretty fucking intense.

Craig flinched when Stan bore down on him, his mouth just as hungry and violent as that look had been as he side-swiped Craig's jaw and buried his teeth into the side of his neck. Stan was always freaking biting him and sucking on his throat like he had some kinda insatiable Twilight fix, which would be irritating annoying and creepy as hell if it didn't feel so damn good.

Craig felt scared and excited enough not to manage any sounds louder than what was contained by his and Stan's ears alone, his muffled yelps further strangled by Stan's teeth. His hands tugged in Stan's hair, then released and dropped down over his broader shoulders. His hips rolled when Stan gripped his ass in his hands, dragging Craig's body flush against his own. There went the legs, and Craig groaned, deep and throaty as Stan dragged his teeth down his neck and collarbone, bumping over his chest and biting onto a nipple.

What the fuck...who _does_ that?

Craig was delirious enough to reconsider the weirdness having his nipples bitten in a matter of a few seconds' persuasion, especially with Stan's tongue licking the sore, swollen nubs between his insatiable chomping, and sucking on them like his mama hadn't fed him as a child.

His breath faltered and hitched - his breathing pattern for the next several minutes when Stan's mouth left his chest and went further down, his tongue making a lover out of Craig's bellybutton, and twitching when he got the familiar tracing of Stan's touch against his ticklish hip.

Craig's throat convulsed and his head tipped back as his body did a full spasm, hips pressing up against Stan's hands with eyes squeezing shut in desperation when Stan's head made to go lower. Stan couldn't get any closer if he tried, and it couldn't have been that Craig was self-conscious or - god forbid - _impotent_ , because he came almost before Stan's lips touched his cock.

Stan slid down on his cock while Craig was still coming, his wonderful amazing _gorgeous_ mouth sucking and swallowing him clean. There was no distaste on Stan's face when Craig was finally able to pull himself together enough to look, but Craig was making face enough for both of them, caught between horrified and fascinated. Dazed.

Shit, that'd felt good... _seriously_ good.

Craig's legs draped long and languid over Stan's thighs when the other sat up as he'd been when he was staring uncomfortably at Craig the previous time. His look now was less inscrutable and more raw, his hands roving over Craig's shaky thighs, tracing the bump of his knees and the curve of his calf and back up again with innate, thoughtless assurance.

Craig looked back at him beneath the arm pressed over his forehead, feeling everything from his spine to his pinky toe turn liquid and pliant. Stan's hands felt rough and warm on his body, and it was sweet indulgence letting him touch. Craig's legs fell open just a little more, back curving provocatively, and his throat bare in a more basic invitation than Stan was going to get admitted from Craig's own mouth.

Yeah, so, the fingering sucked the first time. But hopefully it was due to Stan being a douche rather than completely incompetent.

Stan thought about the condom he had stashed in his top bedside drawer. He had been awkwardly optimistic about finally being able to use the rubber, even though he and Craig hadn't even kissed before that day. Still, he'd frantically dug through piles of accumulated junk to find the condom before Craig had arrived at his house after school. It was more than a year old - a relic from the last first time he thought he was going to have sex, but ended up becoming violently ill for days after instead.

Unless he ever found a female partner with an emetophilia fetish, it was apparent he would cock-block himself each and every time he tried to get into someone's skirt, which was horrifying when he was straight in all other ways that mattered to high school boys. Like eating enough for seven people and playing aggressive physical sports and jacking off till his dick went numb.

Craig _did_ make his stomach knot up and turn over, but the feeling had more to do with the salty taste of come on his tongue, the pale, bite-mottled skin under his hands, and Craig's slender body stretched out and sated on Stan's bed, waiting. There was no reflexive sickness or sense of revulsion to him about what they were doing...were going to do.

Stan reached over to the side table and retrieved the condom and a small tube of regular hand lotion that had only ever moisturized his right hand and cock. And sometimes his nipples when he was feeling adventurous.

Craig gaped at the items, his eyebrows bunching together in increasingly scandalized awareness. "Why the...why the _fuck_ did you not use lotion the first time?! You're a goddamn asshole, Stan. What the _fuck.._."

Craig cursed out loud for an impressive length of time. Several long moments passed until he was somewhat winded and repeating colorful explicatives he'd invented minutes ago. He clenched his fists in the sheets to keep from punching Stan in the mouth for being a fucking dick and fingering him dry.

Stan had no response while Craig exhausted himself yelling at him, although he didn't look particularly apologetic either. Craig had gone taut and tense again, his legs like rocks and clamped together as close as they could be with Stan between them.

"I fucking swear I'm jamming a stick up your ass so _hard_ the next time you even _look_ at a motherfuckin' tree, goddamn hippie cuntfucker--M-mmh...!"

Stan pressed his thumb against the hinge of Craig's jaw, his fingers digging into the side of his neck as he coaxed Craig's violently filthy mouth open, kissing him slow and deep as he dimpled the top mattress beneath them with the combined weight of his body lowering over Craig's. His other hand smoothed over Craig's knee to his ass, tilting his pelvis upwards as his hips ground into him, his cock sliding hot and heavy against Craig's, nudging his balls on the upward stroke.

"Oh _jesus_ fuck," Craig groaned around Stan's tongue, his body rocking and heating with the friction generated with Stan moving incessantly on top of him.

Craig's mind shut down, went absolutely seal-proof against anything that vaguely resembled a thought process. By the time he could do more than suck on Stan's tongue and scratch the living hell out of his back, Stan's _slick_ fingers were at his hole again, rubbing and pushing in and out with shallow motions that didn't even begin to penetrate him.

Fucking dickweed, holding out on him like that. Like he knew what the hell he was doing the whole time, and Craig was just being dragged along for the ride.

The light touches were maddening, Craig's moans escalating into impatient noises against Stan's lips, kissing and licking into his mouth like good behavior was going to get Stan to quit fucking around and _fuck_ him, christ. Craig groaned when Stan pushed more lotion into him, his middle finger pressing in until Craig could feel the other knuckles brush against his ass and balls. The penetration felt like shit, literally, and Craig struggled not to tense and push Stan out of him, especially when his finger did some kind of slow twisting motion and slid back out, which felt absolutely disgusting.

Craig pulled his head away and swallowed hard, feeling distressingly nauseous for a moment, but the familiar feeling of Stan's mouth finding his neck and the pressure of Stan's hip against his cock eased the worse of the unfamiliar sensations. "Fuck..." Craig whispered, strained but giving in as Stan returned two fingers, easing him open with those scissoring motions that went a lot further when Craig was kinda turned on and slicked up.

"God...Stan. Just do it..." Craig was shaking, pressing his lips to the curve of Stan's ear and bucking against him impatiently. The preparation was torture and he just wanted Stan inside him at that point, no matter how much more painful a thicker, harder cock had to feel pushing inside his previously un-fucked asshole.

Craig felt delirious, feverish, his hips writhing impatiently as Stan pushed back to fumble with the condom wrapper, fingers slippery with lotion and whatever had been in Craig's ass. Hopefully _nothing_ , otherwise Stan was never touching him with that hand again.

"Anytime, princess," Craig forced a deliberately casual drawl, pillowing his arm underneath his head with the other draped across his belly. He grinned at Stan's flush, baiting him to keep them both from losing themselves in nerves, and just because Stan was his bitch.

Stan finally picked the condom out of the shredded wrapper, trying to unroll it, but the stretchy, pre-lubricated rubber was not cooperating with his overeager fingers. "Shit..." he cursed, nearly dropping the condom for the third time.

"What the fuck... God, Stan. Didn't they teach you this shit in shop class?"

"Shut up! I'm trying..."

"Here, gimme."

Craig plucked the condom out of Stan's greasy fingers, looked at it in deep consideration, and promptly launched it far across the room, not even watching where it landed. He smiled brightly, having taken care of the condom issue, and turned narrowed eyes back on Stan. "Now _fuck_ me, bitch."

The gaping look numbnuts gave him was priceless, and Craig had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Or fucking Stan himself.

"You haven't screwed anyone else, right?" Craig asked when Stan glanced furtively at the sad, sticky condom on the floor, adding under his breath, "Obviously."

And obviously he wasn't going to knock Craig up, so they'd be fine without one. Craig felt a little bit guilty, though, because really they probably should use a condom like good little boy scouts, but Craig was the one about to get cream-pied, and he couldn't find it in himself to care at the moment.

"C'mon, hot stuff," Craig murmured, touching the side of Stan's face and turning it back towards him, eating up Stan's baffled expression and the redness of his skin. Craig's lips touched Stan's, pulling back millimeters at a time and returning to catch at Stan with light, teasing kisses when he faltered, steadily guiding them downwards until Craig was on his back, Stan braced over him again.

Craig started when Stan's bare cock nudged behind his balls, Stan having taken over the kisses that had evolved deep and hungry. Craig's hand flailed out for the tube of lotion, not even _trying_ to go at it dry again, and splurted half the mess onto his palm. He didn't break the kiss, but Stan did when he gasped at Craig's slick hand going around his cock, pumping and slathering him with lotion. Stan was going to have the softest-skinned cock in the history of ever, but that was a small price to pay if Craig's ass was spared some suffering along the way.

Stan thrust a few times into Craig's fist, wheezing, before he frantically pushed his hand away, too close to coming. His mouth hovered over Craig's while he tried to cool down and gasp for breath. Craig was a complete fucking cocktease all the while, nipping at Stan's bottom lip, giving him these _eyes_ , and making low, hungry noises in the back of his throat that Stan had never heard come from anyone before.

Even if Craig had reserves about being bottom bitch, he was doing a damn fine job of getting Stan riled up and half out of his mind with the need to fuck him into the mattress. Stan grabbed his hips and hauled him up partially into his lap without delay, avoiding looking directly at Craig's face as he probed with fingers and shakily nudged himself against Craig's hole, trying not to look there either.

"Come on, come on," Craig muttered, grabbing onto Stan's shoulders as his eyes locked on the direction where their bodies would be merging together. He bit his lip to keep from crying out or cursing though when Stan began pushing into him, the pain intense and immediate despite their lengthier preparation and complete want for this to happen. He took a high, whistling breath each time Stan eased back then pushed in further, inches that felt like excruciating miles of overlarge, painful penis.

Craig hoped to god it only hurt like this the first time, or else he and Stan were both pursuing goddamn monkhood, fuck this shit. Craig dropped back against the bed, focusing on making himself as limp and easy as possible - which meant basically laying there and letting Stan do all the work.

Their first time having sex didn't feel good. At all.

Yet...the pain was stunning because it was still _Stan_ inside of him, Stan forcing all those embarrassing noises out of Craig and leaning over him with that stupid concerned look on his face because he just couldn't stop. Craig wasn't going to make him stop, and lifted his hips so Stan could sink all the way deeper inside.

Craig moaned and cursed quietly under his breath with each jarring thrust, taking in everything until Stan gave a final shudder and groan, spilling into him embarrassingly – and thankfully - quickly.


	6. Toothbrush

Lessons learned after getting fucked in the ass: Hand lotion was **not** an acceptable form of lubrication. The skin absorbed most of the lotion, but the residue felt nasty and would not wipe off for anything. Next time, _next time_ , they were getting the real goddamn KY lubricant, and Stan was using up at least half the bottle on him first - if Craig ever felt he was insane enough to bottom again. Two: They were getting fucking condoms. If the lotion wasn't bad enough, an ass full of spooge had been even worse. Warm and runny snot-like consistency did nothing for Craig, especially when come cooled and glued his thighs and ass cheeks together.

And they needed to research and experiment. Loads of gay porn downloads and, god, fingering, butt plugs, the kind of lubricant that warms and tingles on contact – anything to make sex with Stan feel as good as the rest of it did.

Who the hell did this for fun anyway? What was the point of being a faggot if he couldn't get his jollies from buttfucking?

Craig tried to maintain being angry with Stan despite having irritatingly warm fuzzy feelings for him. He kept his face stubbornly turned from his, comfortable on his stomach with his head pillowed in his arms, looking away so Stan couldn't see the blissful expression that reluctantly stole over Craig's face as Stan's hands skillfully moved over him.

After Stan had washed his hands and returned with a warm rag to wipe them both down with, he used the rest of the lotion to rub into Craig's back, digging deep into the tense muscles with his strong hands to ease the bone-deep aches. Craig laid there grunting and making pleased noises, half-charmed into dozing off right there, but he got thrashy when Stan veered too close to his ass, slightly traumatized from their fucking.

"Nnnh-Fuck off, Marsh!"

"Okay okay, sheesh. Baby."

Stan grinned as he kissed his shoulder blade and stroked Craig's long body, his lips dancing over the back of his neck and nuzzling behind his ear with wordless apologies. Despite his regret for hurting Craig, Stan was obnoxiously giddy and dared to be actually fucking _glowing_. Craig, though, had been left pale, boneless, and sickly after they'd fucked, moaning his discomfort at timed intervals to wring the most guilt out of Stan, but was content to let Stan pamper him indiscriminately.

Craig reluctantly felt the last clinging pieces of annoyance fall away as he melted underneath Stan's persistent attentions. He wasn't really mad, hadn't been, but the sex had been a jarring experience for the both of them.

The _really_ crazy thing was...he'd do it again in a heartbeat.

He'd even stand to lose at their game again, be the bottom bitch, although he wasn't exactly volunteering for the position either. Despite the burning ache he harbored uncomfortably deep inside, he still felt warmth curdle low in his belly at the fact he had had _sex_ with Stan. Stan's dick had been inside of him, _came_ inside of him, and left his mark on Craig that was so beyond anything he'd ever experienced - emotionally and physically. Given, he wouldn't be bragging about that shit to anyone, and would happily throttle Stan if he did either.

Stan was slowing down with the back rub, to Craig's immense disappointment, but he ended the rubdown with a sudden loud smack to Craig's ass cheek that startled a shrieking yelp and all sleepiness out of the half-comatose guy. Stan avoided the other's flailing fists and smoothly scooped Craig up with his arm instead, laying out beside him while tucking Craig's back against his chest, his knees pressed into the backs of Craig's.

"Goddamnit..." Craig grumbled, digging an elbow back against Stan's stomach before soon relinquishing his resistance, too relaxed from Stan's manipulations. Despite him being a clingy fucker, the lack of space between their bodies was warm and comfortable and right where Craig needed to be.

Besides, Stan had just jacked his virginity - he goddamn well _better_ cuddle him.

Stan's kisses spread slowly over his neck, voice humming in low, soft tones even though Craig's only replies were sleepy snorts or squirming in a covert attempt to press in closer to Stan.

Craig must have dozed off for a second, or an hour, because when he blinked his heavy eyes open he found himself with his cheek smashed against Stan's shoulder, half his face horrifyingly wet with drool. His legs were irrevocably tangled with Stan's, his half-hard cock pressed into Stan's hip to ease some of the pressure that had to come from all this overheated skin against his own. Remembrances of that skin _inside_ his own. Craig shivered.

"Aw, princess," Stan murmured teasingly, his blue eyes bright with amusement at Craig's disgruntled flush as he wiped the spit off his cheek with his hand.

"Shut up, ass pirate. I think you left some smug right here..." Craig narrowed his eyes and poked Stan's cheek hard, nearly losing his finger to Stan's playful snap of teeth.

Their bickering went downhill from there.

It was kind of crazy how wrestling around with another guy on a bed when they both were naked quickly escalated into some highly distracting rubbing and groping. Maybe the humping was inevitable too, but it took some kind of lower intentions to end up pinned beneath the guy, legs spread and open for the other's hips to settle between them snugly.

Stan had rolled Craig onto his back, braced on his forearms above him, and moved against him in a way that he now knew Craig couldn't resist. His gaze caught Craig's and his mouth turned up in smug amusement, each thrust and roll of his hips slow and lazy, designed to turn Craig's pale face _red_ and make his body squirm.

"Jesus christ... _Stan_..." Craig panted, clutching his fingers against the other's shoulders. The friction felt so good...just the pleasure of their bodies moving together without pain. Rubbing dicks was great for getting off, but already they were beginning to crave that spark of closeness, that real physical connection that came with the pain, but also deeper satisfaction.

Craig knew his face was looking more and more retarded by the way Stan's smile stretched and his eyes darkened as he thrust a little harder, eating up Craig's expressions until he made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat and mashed his face against Stan's shoulder to avoid being looked at. Stan laughed against his ear and held him tighter, his laughter eventually becoming stilted as their bodies rushed together, pushing and arching until warmth exploded between their bellies.

They slipped in the combined mess of their come, gripping at each other until they could manage to stop moving, collapsed together breathlessly.

"God, fuckin' heifer," Craig grunted as Stan dropped down on top of him, but kept him there with arms locked around Stan's back and shoulders, legs tangled together.

"Whiny bitch," Stan said back affectionately, nipping at Craig's neck.

"Mmmhh." Craig's sigh was content, coming easily when Stan shifted them over onto their sides. Stan's arms went around him as their lips nudged and slotted together before either of them even thought about kissing.

He liked making out with Stan, really fucking liked it, but he was kind of hesitant to initiate too much because of the preconceptions still rattling around in his head. Fucking was fine, something every teenage boy in their class aspired towards, but who the hell would play up kissing and cuddling their girl as something almost better? Maybe he'd lucked out that Stan was an affectionate fucker and Craig didn't have to say a word to get him to touch him, hold him close and kiss him stupid, although his face went hot at just the thought of any of those requests slipping out of his mouth.

Anyway, when they did fuck again, they were going all out on preparations and precautions next time, because Craig wasn't enthused about the next time he'd have to take a shit when his asshole felt torn and raw.

Craig pressed his face into the crease of Stan's underarm after their kisses tapered off, and promptly thought better of it considering they'd been pretty active the past hour or two. He didn't even know what time it was, but he and his parents kind of had this thing going where he didn't have to call to check in, and they didn't worry about him as long as he showed up to school and came home eventually. Theirs was a sort of indifferent relationship, and if he didn't get his ass killed, suspended, or thrown in jail, they didn't care what he did with his life.

He hadn't seen Stan's parents yet, although he had vague recollections from his childhood of Stan's dad drunk, hairy, and passed out in stained briefs, so he wasn't too anxious about having to make much of an impression on them. Craig got to thinking about what they were going to do while he slowly ran his fingers over Stan's back and hip, feeling more naked now after they'd had sex than before when they were just messing around. At the moment, though, he'd pretend he wasn't feeling as giddy and drop dead comfortable in Stan's arms.

"I need to brush my teeth. And shower." Craig sighed after a while and squirmed a bit before he was too far gone and getting up would be beyond his basic motor functioning skills.

"I don't have an extra toothbrush," Stan said, unconcerned, not even pretending he wanted to get out of bed. If anything, his arm only tightened around Craig's shoulders and he closed his eyes just to spite him.

"Then let me use yours, douchebag."

"What the fuck, no. That's gross." Stan pulled a face and opened an eye to look down over at Craig, the other's expression slowly becoming bemused and annoyed.

"You just had my dick in your mouth. _I_ should be the one grossed out, but you don't hear me complaining like a little bitch."

"Sure sounds like it."

Craig's fist made a satisfyingly hollow thunk against Stan's chest – his startled grunt even better. Stan's hands groped for him when he pushed away and sat up, tangled in a mess of limbs and sheets and wild hair, but eventually he got himself sorted out and sitting cross-legged against Stan's hip.

"Seriously? I think my teeth are growing fuzz." That could have come out as a whine, but Craig felt a haze of comfort and weird familiarity settle around them, and his tone was mild instead. His fingers played idly against Stan's hipbone, making no other effort to get up as he shyly took inventory of Stan's naked body just laid out there for him.

God, he was pretty.

Craig was secure enough to admit Stan was almost like his better-looking doppelganger, which made him half-evil just by affiliation. Where Craig's black hair was cut unmanageably short and sort of just _there_ , Stan's was soft and shiny and longish enough to look fabulously bed-tousled whether he used a brush or had just gotten done fucking. Craig could gel and style the hell out of his own hair and it'd look the same either way – like a hairy wombat shat on his head and left it there for him to deal with.

...Maybe not that bad, but nothing that great either.

And while Craig's obvious distaste for dentists was apparent, Stan had been blessed with obnoxiously white teeth, perfectly ordered in his pretty cock-sucker mouth with the softest, fullest lips that were almost embarrassing for any guy to have, except when he kissed like Stan did. Stan's skin was unblemished and saw the sun consistently enough to retain a healthy golden glow, while Craig fucking _loathed_ the outdoors and rivaled the Twilight pussies and Goth fags for the palest skin in the kingdom.

And, god, their bodies. Needless to say, Stan played sports and Craig didn't. He _was_ taller by maybe an inch or half, but he didn't need his barely-there muscular structure stretched out any thinner on his lanky frame than it already was.

Even his fucking blue eyes were _bluer_ than Craig's.

If Craig was prone to self-pity, he'd be wallowing in it by now. But he wasn't the kind of lame-ass individual to harbor resentment for other people's luck, or care much else about what happened outside of his own personal bubble of life. He was just a little baffled how Stan had slipped so completely inside that bubble when - aside from some superficial similarities - they were different just enough that they should've clashed or at least gone on civilly ignoring each other. Instead, their arguing was playful, kinda sexy, and had pretty much led to fun naked times on Stan's bed.

They didn't _look_ odd together...but they didn't exactly compliment either. Craig didn't quite get how their involvement with each other had happened, but he wouldn't try to break his brain second-guessing a good thing.

Eventually they conferred in the bathroom when bladders won out over the lazy resistance towards cleanliness. They both tried to piss at the same time, which ended in them trying to poke at each other with their dicks, nudging their pink, spongy heads together while water still streamed from the slits. The brief, dripping swordplay was a humiliatingly unexpected turn on and they ended up getting some spillage over the edge of the bowl, which they then had to clean up afterward, avoiding meeting each other's eyes.

"C'mon. Let me use your toothbrush," Craig wheedled while Stan threw the dirty towel they'd used into a laundry basket and washed his hands, looking over at a capped silver cup on the sink top with different-colored brushes poking out from each of the four holes. He wondered if he should chance grabbing one and hope it was Stan's, but then again Stan's scary sister Shelly had a reputation, and Craig did _not_ want whatever had been in her mouth.

"Nope."

Stan went a step further and plucked the blue toothbrush - of course - out of the holder, squeezing a dollop of minty paste onto the bristles and holding the brush under the running faucet for a second or two, happily dismissing Craig.

"Goddamnit, Stan!" Craig hissed, seriously fucking close to kicking him in the shin and stealing his goddamn toothbrush. Maybe even shove the handle up his ass when he was through.

Stan shut off the water and finally slanted his eyes over to look at him, a considering look crossing his face as he wiggled the excess water off the brush, obviously toying with him. "Okay...fine. But you gotta earn it first."

Yeah, kicking him sounded like a really good idea right now.

Craig's eyes and lips went tight, giving Stan an evil look, but he hopped up gingerly on the countertop to sit down, getting the sweatpants that he'd quickly tossed on a little wet at the seat. He didn't care because they'd hopefully be taken off soon anyway.

"Bitch. How do I earn it then?"

Stan must have thought about his conditions while Craig was getting himself settled, because he gave him a slow smile and popped the toothbrush into his mouth, speaking around the handle while he brushed.

"You gotta do something for me. Each favor gets one tooth brushed."

Craig sputtered, his heels knocking back against the cabinet beneath the sink. "You know how many teeth I have? I haven't even gotten my wisdom teeth pulled yet!" Stan was being stupid, but Craig knew he was serious when Stan looked away from him and his eyebrows lifted stubbornly. "...What kind of favors?"

"Your choice."

Jesus fucking christ. If there was the slightest chance Stan might consider a kick in the nutsack a favor then Craig was all for it. Craig was only irritated for a minute at most before his mouth twitched and he caught onto Stan's game. He suppressed a smirk and nudged his foot against Stan's leg, looking downwards thoughtfully.

"You really liked fucking me, huh?" Craig murmured, hearing Stan satisfyingly gag as he choked on his toothbrush. Craig leaned over and pressed his lips against Stan's shoulder, his breath cooling the moist impression. "One."

Stan looked over at him with an expression that was uncertain, startled, and a little bit warm, slowly moving his hand as he made the motions of brushing his teeth. Craig was undaunted, leaning forward and letting his legs fall casually apart as he curved his hand around Stan's upper arm, moving his mouth against his ear.

"You filled me up so much, Stan. God, I could feel you so deep inside..."

There was an immediate rush of heat all along the side of Craig's face, barely able to hear his own voice murmur "two" over the clacking of Stan's teeth gnawing his toothbrush. The douche was gonna choke himself soon, if he didn't take the damn thing out of his mouth and just give into Craig.

Craig kissed the corner of his mouth, tasting toothpaste as his lips roved over Stan's face and upper body, keeping count along with his dirty talk as he hooked the back of his feet against Stan's calves, pulling him in until Stan was standing between his legs, his hand braced hard on Craig's thigh and his pupils blown out.

"You thinkin' about the next time you're gonna fuck me? Are you gonna have me on my knees or against the wall, Stan?"

Even when Craig 'favored' him in awkward spots like the corner of his eye, or right over his eyebrows, or clipping him on the chin with his lips, Stan reacted to his touch, leaning in to press between Craig's legs, his eyes tracking his every movement. Craig kept it up until Stan almost jabbed him in the throat with the toothbrush when Craig kissed him under his nose, Stan sighing around the toothbrush and taking it out, spitting in the sink.

Craig had lost count a while ago - not that he even knew how many teeth he had in the first place - intent on the way his mouth felt pressed against Stan's skin, hitching his hips forward. He sucked the place just below and behind Stan's ear - knowing that spot gave Stan goosebumps down to the tops of his slightly hairy toes. He made a muffled sound and burrowed in closer when he felt hands dig underneath his ass, Stan pulling him off the counter and against his body, then turned against the wall as they rocked together.

"God, you have a dirty mouth," Stan breathed against Craig's neck, moaning softly when Craig's hand slipped down the back of his sweatpants and _squeezed_.

"That's because you wouldn't let me use your toothbrush," Craig quipped back, flipping him off with his other hand, before he stole a kiss from Stan's fresh mouth.


	7. Rematch

Stan finally relinquished his toothbrush when Craig's bitching reached intentionally excruciating decibels, Craig meticulously brushing every single tooth that he'd _earned_ , made even better by Stan's grumpy face as he watched him in the mirror. Dude was seriously grossed out by someone else using his toothbrush, and would probably end up throwing it out anyway, which was funny shit considering sharing a toothbrush probably exchanged less germs than fucking around did.

Stan was pissy and agitated by the time Craig finished up, his gums and tongue feeling sensitive and puffy from the over-brushing, but at least his dirty mouth was as clean as it was ever going to get now.

In the shower, Stan had Craig backed up into the freezing tile wall almost before the water had a chance to heat up, kissing and licking his mouth open for an extra thorough scouring as his tongue flicked over the slick enamel of Craig's teeth. They didn't bother with sponges, washrags, or - god forbid - loufas. Splurting the body wash on each other's wet skin and rubbing together was a highly effective, innovative method of lathering up, using hands in all those little nooks and crannies that blatant humping couldn't quite reach. Or at least it was effective when getting off took up ninety-five percent of all major brain functions.

They dried off after getting each other washed, dirty, and clean again, scampering across the hallway to Stan's room in nothing but loose towels cinched around their waists. Stan let him borrow a pair of sleep pants - blue with yellow stars that Craig, honest to god, could not tell if they were actually girl pants or not. Like the toothbrush thing, Stan refused to let Craig borrow a pair of underwear, making him go commando instead. Going without underwear was fine for Craig if Stan had plans of molesting him, but not so fine when they had to go downstairs for food eventually and Craig was potentially meeting (again) Stan's parents with no panties on.

"You are such a dipshit," Craig said to Stan, wide-eyed as Stan pulled on his own pair of boxers underneath his pajamas, both going shirtless. "What, are you afraid I'm going to see some skid marks? Ruin your perfect image with a few shit smears, cupcake?"

Craig hadn't ever seen anyone's face turn that shade of red before - except when they were choking - perilously close into the realm of purple or puce. He had to turn his head to keep from getting spit on when Stan sputtered at him in outrage.

"Christ, Craig! _No_."

"It's okay. I won't tell..." Craig smiled coyly, reaching out to hook his fingers in the waistband of Stan's pants, tugging lightly. He was tickled pink at Stan's apparent germ and cootie aversion, or maybe he just had a thing against sharing. "Or you can take yours off and we both can go without. It's only fair, right?"

Craig's slower, insinuating tone implied he was apparently getting warmed up for some raunchy, manipulative convincing. Stan must've sensed it by the way his face went prematurely hot and his hand slapped over Craig's mouth, stifling him before he even got started.

Craig grinned viciously behind Stan's hand, parting his lips to lick along the lifeline crease of his palm, and startled the other into jerking his hand away. Stan shot a disgusted, disgruntled glare at him and rubbed his wet palm against his thigh, kinda pissy when he was hot and bothered and Craig was getting one up on him.

"Oh hey," Stan started, changing the subject as he turned and dug something out of the pile of the sweatpants they'd worn earlier. "Look what I found in the bathroom..." He held up a plain white tube Craig squinted at until Stan turned it around so Craig could see the label.

Craig's eyes startled open, and then narrowed dangerously, actually feeling his blood pressure rise like it never had before. A tension built up in the back of his neck and his chest that was one step away from decking that stupid fucker just to relieve some of that pressure.

"You had that shit the _whole_ time--"

"No! I swear I just found it in the bathroom! It's probably...it's probably someone else's, but I don't think it's been used yet."

How the hell Stan could come by a perfectly new bottle of KY jelly and not mention the fact until now...after fingering Craig's virgin rectum with spit and fucking him with hand lotion unnecessarily. Craig wouldn't put it past Stan to be planning and _planting_ this shit, dragging Craig around by his testicles and then be all like 'oh hey guess what' afterwards.

Craig considered the ache in his hips, throbbing in his lower back, and the stupid bottle in Stan's hand that probably could have spared him the worst of that irritating discomfort.

"Mother _fucker_."

Craig's expression went beyond infuriated into icy-cold stillness, his eyes dark and hollowed out by the pinpoints of his pupils.

Stan opened his mouth, but shut it immediately at Craig's look that was one step removed from hauling off the most hardcore bitch slap ever. He felt nervous and actually a little bit fearful...but not scared, exactly. Something else that bordered perverse excitement from getting such a strong reaction out of Craig, even though that hadn't been his intention. For all he knew the lube was his parents', forgotten during one of the nights his dad had passed out drunk the rare times his mom might have wanted...or at least tolerated Randy's sloppy attentions, the tube having been forgotten or given up on in Sharon's frustration, or relief.

Thinking about the second possibility - Shelly - had bile creeping up his throat from just allowing that scattering thought to pass, so he just counted himself - _them_ \- fortunate and tried not to think anymore on the acquisition of personal lubricant in the bathroom.

"Seriously, man. I didn't know it was there--"

"Yeah, well, then your parents already think you're a faggot and put that shit in there for your own personal use, huh."

That thrown-out statement shouldn't have cut as deeply as it had, but Stan looked so startled and panicked for a moment that Craig's steely expression faltered.

"...Or they were just planning to rape you in your sleep with a gerbil. Who knows." Craig shrugged with one shoulder, his comment hopefully inane and gross enough to get Stan to inch that stick out his ass a bit and stop freaking about his parents' little peephole into his closet.

"Okay whatever," Craig sighed tightly, climbing on the bed after one sharp look at Stan got him there too, sitting cross-legged and facing each other. He was seriously tempted to shove Stan face-down on the bed, clamp a hand over the back of his neck, and beat the living shit out of him, but there were other ways of getting back at him while also getting his. Although, the original impulse took up a very special place in his heart as a back-up plan should things get out of hand.

Stan fidgeted while Craig stared him down, enjoying the power play, but not so much liking the fact they had real actual lube and wouldn't be able to use it until way past the point that information would have been relevant the first time around.

"We're having a fuckin' rematch, but this time we're bypassing all that fisting and bitch slapping shit and going right to fucking. Loser takes it."

Craig's tone left no room for argument, his expression hard and determined, and his fist already clenching up to start the game. Although, he looked more likely to throw a punch than play their twisted version of rock-paper-scissors at the moment.

Neither counted out loud, the meaty thwack of fists against palms keeping time as they brandished their weapon of choice on a silent 'three.' Craig didn't flinch when he immediately lost to Stan's fist against his scissors, closing his fist and pounding it without losing a beat for the second match, which he picked up and won with a flat hand, putting them even.

Stan looked pale and nervous, his blue eyes flicking up from their hands to Craig's dark-expressioned face to the bottle of lube sitting conspicuously at his thigh. He sort of fazed out at the third and final round, not knowing what he'd thrown exactly - could've been the Vulcan greeting or a gang sign - but realizing whatever it had been was enough to lose when Craig's hand pushed against his shoulder, shoving him over.

"Wait...wait..." Stan gasped, not actually suicidal enough to resist, but he slipped on his knees when Craig yanked off his pants and boxer shorts, ending up on his stomach and clutching at his ransacked sheets as he stared blankly round-eyed at the headboard in front of him.

Craig had a hand pressed hard over his lower back, making his spine creak as he shifted up over him, mounting his legs as Stan heard the plastic click of a bottle cap opening. A cold drizzle fell right along Stan's crack, hearing a second click and thump as Craig presumably closed the cap and tossed the tube somewhere out of the way. Stan bit his lip and bucked shortly when fingers smeared into the line of jelly, shivering when Craig pushed between his ass cheeks, down over his twitching hole and just behind his balls, dragging upwards again in a long, firm sweep.

"You look like such a bitch right now, you know that, Stan? Getting ready for me to fuck your tight ass and pop your sweet little cherry. You'd like that, huh..."

Craig leaned over Stan's back, shoving a knee between Stan's thighs and forcing them apart while almost kneeing him in the junk. Stan honestly didn't know if that narrowly-averted disaster was accidental or on purpose. Craig's murmurs were low and oddly tender, cutting as they degraded Stan, violating him with words while he ran his thumb over his tight, dusky hole. He pressed in with the tip of his thumb until the puckered mouth gave way and sucked around the intrusion, his wet fingers curving over Stan's balls.

Stan's throat quivered, swallowing convulsively as he buried his head in his arms, unable to escape Craig's erotic violation. Not exactly wanting to...

"You'd better not fucking go to sleep on me, Stanley." Craig's growl reverberated through Stan's back, his head coming up with a startled gasp as Craig twisted his hand and stuffed two fingers inside his asshole, mockingly working his index and middle fingers apart in a parody of scissoring. "I'm going to pound that boypussy of yours so hard you're gonna fuckin' _feel_ it for weeks. I shouldn't even be using lube...just ride you raw and dry like you did me..."

Stan's entire body trembled, pushing away and into Craig's fingers like he couldn't get away fast enough, and couldn't get enough. Craig pulled his hand back - the most preparation Stan was going to get - and had to wedge himself between his legs since Stan wasn't getting up to make the position any easier.

"Goddamnit...you take it like a bitch, Stan," Craig grunted, one eye scrunched shut as he grappled against Stan's slippery thighs and ass cheeks, trying to get to a place where he could push in. Stan's low, pained moans and the tightness cinching around the head of his cock told him when he'd found it, both of them groaning as he rocked against him without any more idea about what he was doing other than item 'A' went into slot 'B'.

Stan flat on his belly might have been no help at all, but he didn't resist Craig either. In fact, he was so _not_ resistant that Craig could've been humping a corpse for all that his cooperation mattered. A really hot corpse anyway, with good teeth, if he was into that sort of thing.

Craig wiggled his hands under Stan's chest as he spread himself out over his back, enough of his cock inside that he was fairly certain he wasn't going to pop out. He gave him a reach around to palm his tits and strum his thumbnails against Stan's tight little nipples, which finally got Stan squirmy, but for the most part he just laid there and suffered with Craig's cock thrusting into his ass. Stan hissed in pain every once in awhile on an inward push, and his breathing was stunted at times, but he didn't moan or move or buck his hips, giving away nothing about how losing his ass-virginity was affecting him.

"Jesus...Nnhh..." Craig bit his shoulder savagely when he came without warning, Stan arching underneath him in a restrained struggle at the unexpected violence and gush of wetness spurting into him. _No condom for you, bitch,_ Craig grinned to himself, kind of embarrassingly smug about the nasty, squishing sounds that filled up the space between them as he dumped his load into Stan's ass.

"Nmphh," Stan grunted when Craig dropped against his back, heavy as fuck for such a scrawny dude.

"...Are you gonna _cry_?" Craig's taunting voice came gleefully from over his shoulder moments later, squeezing Stan's tits in his hands as he nuzzled his face between Stan's sweaty shoulder blades.

"Because of how much you fucking sucked at that?" Stan asked dryly, squirming uncomfortably and huffing when Craig obviously wasn't going anywhere soon. "...Then yeah. I think I will."

Stan yelped when Craig bit him again and pinched his nipples, struggling in unexpected panic against him when Craig tried to push him over onto his back, probably to punch him in the throat for having laid there like a dead gay fish the whole time he was being fucked.

"Dude...no! Get...off..." Stan gripped what was left of the covers on his bed, shuddering when Craig slipped out of him wetly, leaving a trail of slime down his thighs and trickling out of his sore asshole. Craig's fingers dug underneath Stan's armpits viciously, banking on him being as ticklish there as he was on the soles of his feet.

Stan's scream and subsequent flailing was hilarious and effective, Craig shoving him over onto his back and sitting on his legs to hold him down, hands squeezed around Stan's straining biceps. Craig opened his mouth to claim victory when his breath stuttered and stole straight out of his lungs, staring down at Stan in shocked disbelief.

"Holy fuck dude..." Craig breathed in with a surprised hiss, his wide eyes fluttering between Stan's messy, limp cock to his bright red face. "You CAME from that? How could you possibly fucking come?!"

Stan groaned and turned his face away from Craig's scrutiny, unable to cover himself with Craig holding him down, his belly and thighs a cooling, incriminating mess.

"Omigod...you _liiiked_ it! Was it the nipples? It was the nipples, wasn't it."

Stan's skin went hot all the way up to his ears, struggling to roll back over, but Craig was just holding him down and staring at him like he'd found the goddamn Holy Grail for queers.

"God... Just leave it, Craig!" Stan was really uncomfortable. Like _really_ uncomfortable, Craig realized ecstatically.

"Shut up no. No, this is great. Now you never have to fuck me with that goddamn Loch Ness Monster between your legs! You can bend over and be my bitch from now on, Stan. Hmm?"

Craig didn't give him a chance to respond, climbing off and pushing Stan over into their mess as he cuddled up to him from behind, nuzzling and kissing him as he rubbed him down like Stan had before, although giggling annoyingly in random outbursts the whole time until Stan elbowed him in the ribs with a put-upon sigh.

\--

It had been someone's awesome idea to begin their epic quest into gaydom on a Friday, so there was no real reason for them to crawl out of bed and have to fake perkiness the next day, trying to hide the bite marks and bruises broken all along their skin like a vicious rash.

They dozed off a few times, reawakened after a shuffling of limbs trying to get comfortable and adjusted around another's body, but they couldn't stay asleep for long, and didn't try. Each time Craig turned over in the unbreakable circle of Stan's arms, he rolled up and kissed him, his lips unerringly finding Stan's in his room that had long ago gone dark with the disappearance of time and daylight. He was warily hesitant to kiss him like that, unbidden, but was relieved when Stan met him back each time, his mouth soft and warm and welcoming.

Craig could have easily let himself get overwhelmed with the way they couldn't stop touching each other, but he felt safe and hidden in the dark, blankets pulled up over their shoulders as they kept each other half-awake all night. He lost the battle and resistance in his head as Stan's lips and fingertips discovered new inches of skin to touch, dazed by how good he could feel, how tired, with Stan's hands obsessively mapping his body.

They kissed until their mouths were sore and their tongues went numb, and then lipped sleepily at each other's chins necks and faces until eventually their bodies collapsed, tangled together and exhausted in the soft illumination of morning.

That weekend they indulged in every want and desire, every possible tension brutally chased down and extinguished. Sex was determined in speed rounds of gay rock-paper-scissors and, even though neither of them had gotten fisted yet, Stan had a pronounced gimp and look on his face like he was chronically constipated the first time he tried to walk after being fucked. Craig almost pissed himself laughing, but Stan got him back the next time he lost and fucked him so hard he nearly cracked his head open on Stan's stupid headboard.

They laid in bed for hours at a time between fucking - kissing, touching, doing anything and everything they could just to feel good. They licked the sweat and come off each other's bodies and promptly replaced it, blankets and limbs becoming a sweltering cocoon wrapped around them as they marinated in a disgusting mess of fluids and heat and musk. They only emerged from Stan's room to piss and shower, find clean sheets when the previous ones became unbearable, and to gorge themselves on whatever they could find in the kitchen by the time their stomachs were practically gnawing at their spines.

Stan's parents seemed only mildly baffled at the appearance of Craig, but they fed him and only asked polite, indifferent questions unrelated to fucking their son. Generally, he and Stan tried to avoid the other people in the house, but didn't even try to hide the bruises across their hips and chests and the fingerprints embedded into their upper arms, dizzy and delirious on sex.

They were drawn to overindulge without anyone, not even themselves, to tell them no. Stan thanked Shelly for having paved an easy route for Stan with her endless parade of older sleazy boyfriends, forcing their parents into exasperated obliviousness after at least sticking her on the pill before there was any lasting damage done. If anything, Craig only scored more points with them for having a dong.

Back in Stan's room, they were sweatily working out an arsenal of findings against each other to use as blackmail or leverage between them, neither refusing a shy/bold request, neither saying it was too much, that they were too desperately fixated the way they were trying to bury themselves in each other's flesh in a few days' time.

Craig found that Stan was ticklish in the places most people were normally sensitive – the bottoms of his feet, his sides, and underarms. And how Stan would get right _there_ when Craig licked sucked or bit his nipples, behind his ear, or the inside of his thigh where his leg met his groin. The latter Craig had found out in an interlude between sucking Stan off, the entire right side of his face having been unexpectedly splattered with come, sticking in his hair and his ear, dripping down his neck. Stan had looked more surprised than Craig did, although not after Craig demanded he clean off every fucking drop, and wouldn't let him leave the bed to get a towel.

Stan's own investigation turned up Craig's ticklish spots that, in addition to his hip, were behind his knees and the insides of his elbows and the back of his neck – anywhere his joints bent and folded. Craig always fucking lost it when they rubbed together, Stan either holding him down or Craig on top, hunched over hips, heaving and grinding until they came slip-sliding between their bellies.

Craig also had to admit Stan was getting really good at fingering him, having found whatever gland inside of him that made sparks shoot out his eyes and cockhead, digging at the nodule relentlessly with lubed-up fingers until Craig was squalling and kicking at him _not_ to stop.

Stan and Craig were at it until they had left no part of each other's bodies untouched at least a hundred times over, the on-coming school week more of a cockblock than their unfaltering stamina and horniness. Stan's parents finally intervened that Sunday evening, insisting – with no small amount of alarm – that Stan's dad drive Craig home for the night when he could no longer make it down the stairs unaided, not even for food.

Stan's mom had even called ahead in an unknowing waste of time, Craig snickering with relief as he leaned heavily against Stan's shoulder and overheard the tinny, distracted voice of his dad answer "Craig who?"

Craig's clothes had been lost in some kind of wormhole underneath Stan's bed, leaving the house in a stolen pair of Stan's underwear, loose brown sweatpants, and the most ugly gay-assed shirt Craig had ever seen with two pink and blue unicorns on it. No way Stan wasn't stealing his sister's clothes on the side, whatever he said otherwise. At least Craig had been able to find and throw on his thick blue coat over the whole mess, shivering at the memory of Stan's frantic, heartbroken expression just before Craig left, realizing a little too late that he couldn't exactly kiss him goodbye in front of his parents.

He hunched up in the passenger seat of Randy's clunky old car – a proud, useless statement against the hybrids that were making a slow comeback on their roads. The radio was blasting some 70's rock shit with Randy as the ear-bleeding back up, vents blowing cold air on him the entire jarring ride that didn't actually warm up until they had almost reached his house several blocks away.

Craig had felt the same sense of loss when he left the Marsh's house, probably reflecting Stan's exact expression before he hobbled out into the snow-shoveled driveway, into the car...like someone was sawing off his better-looking Siamese twin attached at the hip that he only just realized was there. Or maybe like operating a fetus off the side of his head like their elementary school nurse... _Some_ kind of extra limb or growth, but by then the comparison had gotten way too obscure and irrelevant that Craig couldn't think about anything else other than the next time he was going to see Stan, and when he was actually going to _sleep_.

...And when the hell he was going to get to his house and away from Stan's dad's not-so-subtle inquiries between songs about a bottle of 'special jelly' that he might have misplaced from the bathroom upstairs.


	8. Obsession

Craig arrived to school the next day well-rested and fucked out and, yeah, freaking _glowing_. He'd passed out the second he'd gotten home last night...maybe even before then because he couldn't actually remember walking inside. He hoped to god Randy hadn't had to carry him in, because he could only imagine what that scene would have looked like. Craig passed out and marked up and down with signs of vicious, sexual savagery, and in the arms of a forty-year-old known alcoholic who already had a notoriously questionable history with Kyle Broflovski's dad.

If any of those horrifying prospects had occurred, then Craig's parents remained oblivious or uncaring, and said nothing to Craig. If anything, they were disappointed to get him back. Not that he was any eager to _be_ back when he could have been passed out, warm and tired, in Stan's bed. In Stan's fucking arms. Jesus.

At school, he was sore in places that were just wrong, and sitting in those hard desk chairs for hours and hours was sheer hell. He should've forged a doctor's note claiming he had a massively infected hemorrhoid, which was perhaps only slightly less humiliating than the truth, but might have gotten himself an inflatable donut to sit on out of the deal. But it was consolation knowing Stan was in the exact same place and condition he was, despite Craig having lost more rounds of gay rock-paper-scissors.

Craig left on most of his layers after coming inside when class began, a little over warm but not uncomfortable. It wasn't unusual to be decked out in full winter gear inside the school building where the temperature was as chronically cold indoors as it was out, except without the bitter wind chill and snowfall, unless he was next to a patchy part of the building's faulty construction. No one noticed if Craig wore a scarf that day, Stan's bites stark against his white skin a warm and vulnerable reminder of the best fucking weekend of his life. Literally, an entire weekend devoted to straight up fucking. Hopefully no one noticed if he was, understandably, a little giddy as well.

After homeroom droned into his social sciences class, his giddiness became short fused when mind-numbing boredom caused him to actually _think_ about the implications of the past weekend, becoming anxious and impatient and actually starting to dread the thought of seeing Stan outside of their enclosed, hedonistic haven of his bedroom. Even passing Stan in the hallways, Craig couldn't say for sure how he would react. He might be able to control his mouth with some conscious effort, but Stan had messed with and rerouted the hard-wiring of his entire body to react with his own.

Craig had kinda been hoping that whatever happened in Stan's room stayed in Stan's room, that they wouldn't be one of those obnoxious couples sucking face and holding hands, skipping merrily down the hallways together. He thought they could have a cool, lazy ease with each other tempered by the assurance that they could have as much of each other as they could stand later on, but Craig didn't realize how much of an effort he would possibly have to make when he already felt so wrecked.

Despite his nervousness, he managed to keep it together when he finally did see Stan for a few seconds in passing, although the douchebag was looking in the opposite direction and hadn't seen him, which was well enough because he didn't know how Stan would react either. If he would look right through Craig and keep walking, or stop short in the hallway and make a motherfuckin' scene fit for Hollywood.

The fluttering and warm excitement from just seeing Stan briefly that Craig carried with him into the next class was immediately offset with annoyance as he shifted uncomfortably on his seat, wondering how obvious it'd be if he packed his coat under his ass just for some relief.

Fucking _Stan_.

Craig's cool resolve not to pussy out completely only lasted until lunch time when Stan came up behind him, plucking his sleeve and twitching his head in the opposite direction of the cafeteria line. Craig's stomach twisted anxiously, suddenly not hungry at all anymore as he followed Stan back out of the lunchroom without a word spoken between them.

Stan's type had to be super anorexic guys because it wasn't enough that he was starving Craig, but he'd had him exerting and sweating so much Craig had lost at least three pounds in the last few days alone, he swore to god. He couldn't really stand to lose the weight in the first place, unless he gained in muscle from holding Stan's heavy ass body off his own, and the unintended abdominal work out from all that thrusting and contracting of his stomach as he came over and over again. Craig fucking hated Phys. Ed. or anything outdoorsy and strenuous, but he didn't think twice about giving his all into Stan's particular work out.

Stan led them to the temporarily abandoned shop class during their lunch hour. They were plastered together almost before the door closed, arms crushing ribs and faces buried in each others necks as their mouths found familiar imprints beneath coat collars and scarves and sucked there hungrily.

Okay, so maybe they hadn't gotten nearly enough of each other that weekend as Craig had thought. He felt trembling and shaken as Stan pulled him away from the door and further inside the classroom, Craig's fingers clinging to his coat and following implicitly.

Somehow Stan coaxed Craig to lay on his back on the grimy cement floor, allowing him a perfectly romantic view of all the gum and crusty old boogers sticking to the underside of the tables, and cobwebs clinging to the wobbly metal legs. Goddamnit, isn't that what they hired Mexicans for? Or at least they had before some equal rights crap movement, so instead the entire school just had one cranky, underpaid old white janitor that didn't do shit other than jack off in the utility closet. Which was probably why Stan didn't drag him there instead.

Stan sat down beside him on the floor, knees pressing into Craig's side and hip. Craig turned his head to look at him, eyes low and heavy as his hand swept out for Stan's, feeling a low dreadful clenching in his stomach when Stan caught his hand and curled it up with his own. Their fingers interlocked while Stan's thumb softly stroked the back of Craig's hand, just looking back at him.

When several minutes passed and neither had let go or glanced away, Craig sunk into the inevitability that they were really that fagged out on each other. He heaved a sigh and Stan's lips twitched like he could read his mind, squeezing Craig's hand but not letting go either. Stan's other hand fingered the stitched trim of Craig's coat just where the hem rode up and separated from the waistband of his jeans. Craig shivered and twitched away warningly when Stan's knuckles brushed against his hip, still stupidly freaking ticklish.

Craig held his breath when Stan's hand slowly shifted and pushed his coat and shirt up towards his chest, his tanned hand splayed out over Craig's pale stomach that had gone concave from gravity, his skipped lunch, and delayed breathing. Stan's fingers stopped just short of his nipples, like touching them was gonna set Craig off. Maybe Stan was forgetting that _he_ was the one with the nipple fetish sensitivity, but just having Stan's hands on him felt unbelievably good after that tense, stressful morning worrying over him.

Stan stroked over Craig's belly and traced a tiny mole at the mouth of his navel with his finger, knowing Craig had others similar to that one on his right shoulder, on the side of his knee, and the back of his neck just barely covered by his short black hair. They both had a multitude of scars and freckles and birthmarks, memorizing each imperfection with obsessive determination and still always finding more.

All Stan did was touch him, and watch him while he touched him, both too into their stolen time together to say anything unnecessary to break the moment. And they were totally having a _moment_ , christ. Even knowing this Craig was shyly unable to look away, but he was spooked when he realized this was what intimacy must be. They were taking scant precious time to be together, not all over each other like they had been at Stan's, even though time was more pressing now.

The touches didn't go below his waist or any further beneath his shirt, which was a frustration and relief because then they would need hours to finish whatever they started here. Craig felt something break a little inside, probably his manhood, when Stan brought their intertwined hands close to his mouth, Craig's eyes closing with a soft sigh as Stan kissed the back of his thumb, teeth wrapped around the knuckle and biting lightly, since Stan couldn't go two seconds without imitating that Twilight fag Edward, per se.

The first warning bell rung an achingly short half-hour later to resume afternoon classes and they both jumped, badly startled after their calm fixation. Stan's hand gripped Craig's like a motherfucking Titanic remake where he was never letting go (Jack), not even if he crushed Craig's hand to powder.

"Jesus..." Craig muttered while he wedged his crippled fingers from beneath Stan's, throwing him a baleful glare, but lucky that it wasn't his masturbating hand. At least he had Stan's hand to borrow for that kind of thing now anyway.

Craig groaned as he struggled to sit up, feeling cold and achy from laying down on the cement for an hour. He slapped Stan's hands away when he tried to help him up, shoving his coat and shirt back down with pink cheeks, but let him brush the sawdust and dirt from his coat and hair and ass. Stan smacked the mess off a little too enthusiastically to be completely necessary and Craig threw him a quick, promising glare for retaliation later.

Craig's mouth felt dry, startled when he realized they hadn't said a word to each other the entire time. Maybe faggots developed some kind of telepathy, or temporary insanity, after they buttfucked because that had to have been the longest he and Stan went without opening their mouths for _something_. They held off on kissing, but were looking at each other's mouths like they were seriously thinking about it as they reluctantly walked over to the door together, keeping their hands self-consciously stuffed in their coat pockets.

Their resistance only lasted a maximum of 12.5 seconds before they relinquished and gave each other a brief, manly one-armed hug that was more like their version of rock-paper-scissors. The embrace was actually about two minutes long, Craig's arms curled behind Stan's back with his hands hooked over his shoulders, lips buried and moving against the side of Stan's neck. Stan's arms immediately, crushingly, slid around Craig's waist, pulling their hips flush, which would have degenerated right there into frantic humping and sucking face if the heavy door hadn't knocked against Stan's back with the first of the shop students arriving to class.

Stan broke away from him with disorienting quickness as he stepped back and students flooded the previously empty classroom. He gave Craig the same lost look through the crowd as he had on his porch last night before he turned and left out into the hallway, shouldering their classmates out of the way.

God how could they do this?

The end of school couldn't come fast enough. They rode the same bus together going home, although separate ones _coming_ to school which had never made sense to Craig, but what ever did in South Park? When he climbed on and automatically looked down the aisle for Stan, he saw him already sitting with his best friend, Kyle, their heads angled together as they talked.

Their gay telepathy must've been at work because Stan's eyes lifted and found Craig's a split-second later. The space next to Stan was empty, Kyle against the window, but Craig felt stupidly awkward about sitting next to him now when they hadn't ever before. In front of their friends nothing had changed and Craig didn't see why anything _should_ when they were only fucking. And kissing. And sneaking off into empty classrooms to hold hands.

Christ, this was retarded.

Craig took his usual place next to Token several seats up, ignoring the jibber jabber and yells around him as he frowned and looked down at his hands clenched in his lap. He was lost in his thoughts for a while until Token nudged his arm with an elbow, sending Craig a quick questioning look, but he was cool enough not to ask or press when Craig just shook his head.

He could feel the stare on the back of his head the entire freaking bus ride to the third stop where Stan and his friends got off, breathing out a quiet sigh of relief that the staring would end there and Stan would stop being so fucking weird and obvious. Except it _didn't_ end there. Craig tensed when the bus jostled from students getting up - mainly that fatass Cartman - and then stopped, seeing a figure stop the line right next to him and _stare._

"Dude, c'mon. What's the hold up?" Kyle bumped into Stan's back, looking over his shoulder questioningly and nudging him when his friend didn't move.

Stan had stopped right in the middle of the fucking aisle, obviously not going anywhere despite the grumbling and cursing behind him, glaring down at him pointedly as Craig's face flooded in extreme embarrassment. Craig felt Token tense next to him, wondering if there was about to be a fight breaking out on the goddamn school bus, and snatched up his bag before people got the wrong - or the right - idea and things got wildly of hand. He didn't look at Stan or anybody else as he stalked off the bus, humiliated and furious with Stan practically walking on his heels behind him.

As soon as Craig stepped off the bus, nowhere near his goddamn house, Stan grabbed his elbow, making as if to haul him off somewhere. Craig's temper snapped and he dropped his bag in the snow as he shoved both hands hard against Stan's chest, forcing him to let go and stumble back against the side of the bus, rocking the bulky yellow deathtrap on its wheels. Immediately, every last person had their faces smashed against the windows, cheering the two of them on into a fight. Craig kind of wanted to punch Stan for herding him around like a bitch, fisting Stan's coat and pressing in close enough to feel the heat of both of their dicks.

Stan's face flushed, and he looked down at Craig's mouth, licking his lips as their faces moved inexorably closer. Craig's dick twitched against his thigh as his eyes tracked the quick movement of Stan's tongue over his lips, his own tongue dying to follow. Oh god, they were about to make out right there, and then everyone would know all about their secret gay romance whether Stan and Craig wanted them to or not.

"What the fuck's your problem, Craig?"

Craig jerked back when a hand landed against his shoulder and shoved, stumbling away from Stan as he twisted his head around in confusion to meet Kyle's angry, perplexed glare. Kyle was almost taller than he was, and just as scrawny, but he looked kind of scarily defensive over Stan right then when Craig had just been thinking about how many layers he'd have to go through to get his hand down the front of Stan's pants.

"Way to go, Jew. Ruined the bitch fight," Cartman sneered, tucking a dollar bill back in his wallet as Kenny disappointedly stuffed his own crumpled one in his pocket, losing out on a bet.

"Goddamn kids, sit the fuck down!" Craig heard the bus driver yell angrily, their classmates groaning and moving back to their seats, nose and forehead streaks smeared across the windows. Craig hauled Stan away from the bus before he got his stupid ass run over when the bus lurched forward and took off, unfortunately not quick enough to pull Kenny out of the way.

Craig let him go with the smallest shove he could get away with when Stan's redheaded bodyguard was breathing down the back of his neck. Crazy fuckers. Craig now remembered why he promised himself all those years ago to never, ever involve himself with those four again. It was too late now to untangle himself from Stan, but that didn't mean he had to put up with shit from Stan's friends.

"We going?" Craig snapped, grabbing up his backpack from the ground before Kenny's blood leaked across the ground and ruined everything inside, hauling the strap over his shoulder and dislodging snow that stuck coldly to his back. Stan followed him, looking as mild and nonplussed as a kitten, that fucking jackass.

Stan threw a distracted wave in Kyle's befuddled direction, catching up with Craig but smart enough not to grab him again in view of his friends.

Bitch was learning.

The bus stop was thankfully close to Stan's house, although it was still a torturous walk considering all Craig wanted to do was tear off their clothes and throw Stan to the ground, fucking him in front of God and the whole neighborhood. Only the barest shreds of self-respect kept him from doing exactly that, although the heated glances Stan kept throwing him told him their 'telepathy' was hard at work.

At Stan's house, Sharon greeted the boys and ushered them into the kitchen for a snack once they took off their boots and outer layers. She gave them an honest but tight smile, letting them get settled with a couple slices of cold leftover pizza from the night before, but exchanged a worrying look with Stan's dad at the other end of the kitchen table. Or at least the look would have been shared if Randy had been less focused on his beer pyramid, only grunting some form of minimal requirement as a greeting before going back to the breakthrough accomplishment of 152 cans!

Stan and Craig were immediately on edge with that one-sided look, feeling a stark, sinking disappointment that they wouldn't be allowed to carry on together as they had been.

Fucking buttbuddy intervention.

"Craig, honey, you know we don't mind you coming over..." Craig didn't know, actually, but he was relieved that he wasn't as big a pain in the ass to them as he literally was to Stan, "but we want to be sure you boys are getting your homework done before you go play."

"Uh...yeah..." Craig's face shot through with red as his mind took a dive down south, severely weirded out by Sharon condoning them _playing_ together, although hopefully that was just an innocent statement on her part and not some kind of terrifying insinuation.

"Stanley, you know how important your football scholarship is. You only have this year and next to keep your grades up."

"Christ, Mom, I _know_." Stan groaned, pinching his nose from the old, familiar argument he had with his parents (re: mom) every other time his friends came over to hang out after school.

Kyle was such a brain anyway, and his own mom even more of a homework Nazi, that Kyle had to go home to finish his work first under her strict dictatorship _then_ come over to hang out for a limited time because he had to get to bed early and rest his humungous brain. Stan's mom would probably jizz herself with joy if Stan had been fucking Kyle instead - his best friend on his ass for his homework while he was _in_ his ass... But she seemed to like Craig well enough, too.

Craig waited for more restrictions or conditions from Stan's mom, like no buttfucking in the house or eating all of the cheese wiz from out the cabinets or using up all the detergent and body wash. Sharon only looked at him with a smile, which became strained when Randy's startling whoop interrupted their conversation as he broke his beer can record...and promptly lost it in a loud, crashing shower of aluminum hitting the table and floor.

"OH YEA-GodDAMNit! Did you see that?! Honey? Stan? Stan's little klepto friend? Aww, you guys totally _missed_ it! Christ..." Randy moped, kicking at the cans under the table as he sat there, dejectedly staring at the tabletop.

"Yes, dear," Sharon said shortly with strained patience. "I think you have another six-pack in the fridge, so you can make a bigger one next time." She really shouldn't be encouraging his drunken behavior, but Randy was so much more bearable when he bypassed the loud weepy stages of intoxication and passed out. Sharon was just trying to help them all along to that point.

Craig realized that was all when Sharon's talk with them didn't continue as she went about preparing for dinner, leaving them alone. Fucking Stan was really going to be that easy and convenient, and Craig quickly agreed to the homework shit if that guaranteed him a one way trip into Stan's pants unhindered. Randy still thought Craig had stolen his lube, but whatever. The KY was getting good practical use in his and Stan's possession, even though they would have to get a new tube soon.

They finished their homework at one end of the kitchen table in record time, while Randy rebuilt his beer pyramid on the other end, although Craig thought he might have been putting algebra answers for English questions. No matter. Stan's parents had established a curfew for them after Sunday's incident, since neither boy had the restraint or foresight on how they were going to even be _alive_ for school the next day and - between them - how neither could sit down for long periods of time comfortably.

They hauled ass into Stan's room as soon as they could get away, Stan shoving him up against the door and getting him halfway out of his clothes before Craig could even fumble for the lock. Craig whined hungry, desperate noises into Stan's mouth as he clawed at the other's shirt, his dick so fucking hard and painful that he was certain he was going to shoot off the second Stan had mouth, hands, or ass wrapped around him.

Stan pushed him towards his bed blindly without ever breaking the kiss, Craig fiercely turned on by the aggression when it wasn't being used degradingly in front of other people. Although he had been aroused even then.

Craig pushed away and dropped down onto the bed, turning and curling around a pillow like he never thought he was going to get to this place again. Stan had washed his sheets and pillowcases, but the underlying scent was undeniably _them_ beneath the strongly scented detergent, like they had absorbed into the mattress. If that was the case, then they might should have gotten plastic sheets instead. Stan's weight jostled the bed as he knelt over Craig's ass, straddling him as he removed the rest of their clothing like they'd caught on fire.

Stan fucked him slow and hungry, despite the urgency of his touches, after slicking Craig's ass full of lube, pushing his face into the pillows. Penetration got a lot easier with practice, but Craig preferred Stan to sink into him with one deep stroke - which he, oh god, he did - than gingerly tapping in and prolonging the inevitable. Stan came as prematurely as ever, before Craig shoved him over to do the same.

They curled up in each other's arms afterward, sweaty and naked and hard again as they kissed like they couldn't in the shop classroom, or outside at the bus stop, or with Stan's parents right there. Stan stroked his hair and stretched Craig's jaw achingly wider with his tongue, Craig's hand clutched against Stan's shoulder and the other trapped beneath his hip as he sucked hard on Stan's tongue. Craig leaned up into him, feeling desperation and exasperation crash over him in a tumultuous mixture that was delicious when he knew he could have all he wanted right then at that moment.

Stan rolled him underneath his body as he moved on top of him, rubbing their hips together while Craig groaned out into his mouth. Craig felt Stan's smirk, biting at his lips when the bastard pulled away, one eyebrow cocked like everything else was.

"Yeah?" Stan asked, wiggling his fingers teasingly as Craig arched his hips up in frustration, then collapsed with a low grunt, glaring back with his own smirk.

"Yeah."

Several seconds of pounding fists later and that was the motherfucking _twelfth_ time Craig had lost in a row to gay rock-paper-scissors.

"Son of a **bitch**!" Craig didn't know if he epically sucked at the game, if it was karma for calling Stan a girl all the time, or if Stan was flat out cheating, but it seemed that Craig was spending all his time on his back when they were together. It was aggravating, especially since Stan was the one with the magically sensitive ass and he could come just by being fucked.

Craig didn't know if he got as much physical pleasure out of the act as Stan did, only knowing he couldn't get enough regardless. The initial penetration hurt every fucking time, but being the bottom bitch now was a million times easier than the first time had been. Stan still had to jack him or suck him off to finish him after he'd blown his own load, although Craig didn't know if the extra stimulation was needed because Craig wasn't an anal slut like Stan, or if Stan just couldn't last long enough to get him off that way, the premature fucker. But Stan made up for his inability to last when they screwed so many times in a row that it felt like one endlessly long fuck.

Maybe Craig could handle taking it in the ass better because of the fact he refused to let Stan fuck him without using globs of honest-to-god KY first, despite the nasty mess Stan left behind after he spooged in him too. No lotion, no generic shit, no liquid soap or goddamn _Crisco_ , even though Stan had used all the above when fingering him, and still claimed Craig tasted like chicken afterwards.

As much as Craig wanted to contest Stan's win, because, seriously? _twelfth_ _time_ , his protest was swallowed up by the heated look Stan gave him the moment he realized he won, like they hadn't just fucked twice. Craig groaned breathlessly when Stan pounced on him, mouth sealing over Craig's just to be sure his bitching wouldn't escape regardless.

Stan hitched Craig's legs up around his waist, placing his cock against Craig's already stretched hole and, in a heavily practiced maneuver, sunk slowly, inexorably into him. Craig arched and his breath expelled in a strangled wheeze, his body never fucking getting used to the feeling of Stan taking him. Stan's cock was perfectly proportional to the rest of him, soft-skinned and neatly cut, but he felt so _big_ pressing into Craig, much larger than his fingers or anything else he'd shoved up Craig's ass lately.

Craig laced his fingers behind Stan's neck, urging him downwards with an open, pleading mouth. Stan was trying to make him the girl in their relationship anyway, so Craig might as well get his fucking kisses too.

The wet, sticky slapping of skin on skin was maddening and headily familiar, their gasps pushing out hot and humid air into each other's mouths. Craig preferred being fucked on his back so he could curl up into Stan's chest or against his shoulder while Stan held him close, kissing and biting his neck then pulling back to watch him, his eyes intense and embarrassingly tender. He observed Craig's every expression, looking for when to angle upward to hit that special spot, when to grind down and catch Craig's cock between their bellies, when to take him in his hand and jack him off while he fucked him harder so they came together. Stan always seemed to get off on watching the stupid faces Craig made when he came.

And Stan... The depressingly few times Craig had gotten to fuck him compared to how many games they had played, he figured out Stan liked it best on his hands and knees, Craig draped over his back and pumping into him. Craig would whisper filthy, dirty nothings in his ear the entire time he was fucking him, pinching and twisting Stan's nipples and making him come without ever touching his dick.

Craig's hand slid down Stan's sweaty back and over his ass while Stan fucked between his legs. He wiggled his strong middle finger between his crack, pressing and rubbing into Stan's clenching asshole and then fucked him with the tip of his finger.

"Oh god...Stan... Fuck _yes_. God... _fuck_ me..." Craig urged him on in groaning, grunting whispers when he felt himself getting close, moving his finger deeper and probing for Stan's own g-spot.

He added his own overdone pornographic soundtrack to the vocals they were already making on Stan's shuddering bed, always having wondered what the hell kind of script that was in adult videos. But right then all Craig could manage was to pray, curse stupidly, and agree to absolutely everything Stan was doing to him, so he guessed porn star lines were actually pretty accurate.

"Fuck...fuck!" Craig's hips hiccuped and jerked, clenching down on Stan as he came hard between Stan's fingers, messing all over their chests and stomachs as he shouted. Stan's final few thrusts were snapping and jarring, feeling like he was trying to stuff Craig up even past his testicles as he shot him up long and endlessly. They had to be at least half-related by now, considering how much of each other's DNA they've sucked up into their own bodies.

Stan grinned his stupidly beautiful smile at Craig as he flopped down heavily on top of him, still buried inside. He kissed him quickly on the lips, radiating satisfaction all over. "...Rematch?" Stan offered selflessly, laughing when Craig snatched up a pillow and smacked him in the head with it, muttering several colorful curses.

They couldn't even stop there, barely a pause for breath as Stan eased out of him and slipped down Craig's body, Craig's sharply angled hips rising up to meet him. Stan licked up most of the mess, sucking the stringy come from his fingers and Craig's stomach. Stan was surprisingly unshy about sticking Craig's cock in his mouth and sucking him down until Craig's vision went black.

Craig keened and scrabbled out for something to hold onto, Stan's hair and the bed covers slipping through his clenching fingers until they wrapped around the more stable headboard. His cock spasmed and jerked weak trickles of come coaxed out by Stan's rolling tongue, kicking at him when he became so sensitive it _hurt_.

Craig was still getting accustomed to dishing out oral himself, not a natural cocksucker like Stanley. The other's reactions were the best part of going down on him though, but Craig would fucking spit everything back at him if Stan came in his mouth without warning him. _He'd_ decided whether he wanted to swallow at the time or not, thank you.

Stan just pushed his sticky thighs apart with his hands, releasing Craig's slobbery wet organ and mouthing down to his nuts instead, his tongue daring to dart behind his sack to lick maddeningly sensitive places. It kind of blew Craig's mind how Stan would put his mouth _anywhere_ on his body, but still wouldn't share a fucking toothbrush with him. Craig even had a plain green one set aside in the medicine cabinet now, Stan making a point that Craig use his own toothbrush, the priss. But Craig wouldn't want to use Stan's anyway, not after he'd frikkin' licked his- _nnnhh_.

They fucked around for as long as they possibly could, only quitting when Stan got a text message from his sister saying to get ready for dinner. Stan obviously relayed him the abridged version _after_ he'd blanched and gone white when reading the full message. He moved away from Craig so suddenly that Craig had to snatch Stan's phone away from him to see what Shelly sent, shoving a hand into Stan's face when the douche tried to grab his phone back, managing to tackle Craig only after he'd read the text first.

The message from Shelly really went more like: 'mom sez u and ur little fuck buddy get ur gay asses down for dinner in 20 min, queermo. and dont clog up the shower drain with spooge again christ.'

Perhaps it was too much to hope for that a closed door and a floor between them meant no one knew what they were up to, or at least Stan seemed to think so. Retard. After that message Stan kind of backed off from touching Craig anymore, weirdly standoffish and obviously sulking, but Craig was kinda fucked out anyway, so whatever.

Craig flipped him off and teased him when Stan told him he was taking a shower _alone_ , amusing himself by stealing all of Stan's underwear out of his drawer when he was in the bathroom and stuffing them into the back of his closet. Craig took his own shower when Stan came back to the room already dressed, Craig covered in only the numerous mouth marks Stan had left on his skin and a pair of Stan's stolen panties.

"Goddamnit, Craig!" Stan sputtered when he recognized his familiar blue and green striped boxers slung low on Craig's skinny hips. He missed when he reached out to snatch them back, Craig laughingly skittering out of his reach as he dove into the bathroom across the hall, locking the door behind him.

Craig wouldn't mention what he did to Stan's toothbrush, only just that he would be very picky about his kisses for a while.

They glared at each other from across the table all throughout dinner, Stan's parents oblivious to their minor feud, but Shelly nearly put a fork through Stan's hand when Craig's misaimed his kick and clipped her in the shin instead.

" **Shit**! Jesus fucking **christ**!" Shelly shrieked, the fork coming down centimeters from Stan's hand as she hauled back and leapt at Craig over the table.

"Jesus christ!" Craig yelped, leaning back as Stan caught her around the waist, getting an elbow in his nose which immediately and profusely began spurting blood. "Goddamnit!"

Sharon just sighed and got up to get a towel for Stan's nose, Randy taking the chance to shove his peas off his plate and into a napkin before she came back. He then folded his hands serenely together in front of him and bowed his head at the sudden vocal appearance of so many religious references at the dinner table.

"Amen," Randy said humbly, elbow knocking over his half-full beer can into Shelly's lap.


	9. Fun and Games

After dinner, Sharon proved herself to be even more insane and oblivious than her husband when she suggested Shelly drive Craig home that night. Randy was tilting precariously half out of his chair, trying to mop up the mess of beer spilt on Shelly with the napkin full of peas that he'd hidden away and forgotten about, promptly remembering them when they went flying all over the table, his explosive daughter, and the floor.

"Shelly, would you mind taking Craig home in the van tonight? I don't think your father's...capable," Sharon said in a bemusingly light tone, despite the chaos and possible homicide attempt going on around her.

Stan and Craig mirrored twin expressions of horror, like Sharon had kindly asked Craig to go into the kitchen, find the biggest and sharpest knife he could, and slit his own throat from ear to ear. Considering the alternative, he just might. At least slitting his throat would be a faster and less painful death than driving home with _Shelly_.

"Seriously, it's no problem. I can walk home," Craig said quickly before Shelly could answer, darting scared, careful glances between her and the proximity of all the pointy utensils within her reach. He could stand walking home three blocks away, alone, at night, in winter that was actually fall, but _felt_ like goddamn winter because of the weather being balls-freezing cold and snowy. Frostbite might even be less painful then the alternatives.

" _Fuck_ this shit. God, Dad! Stop...getting...pea on me." Shelly bared her remarkably perfect teeth with a feral snap, Craig knowing that she didn't come by those impressive chompers naturally like her brother. In fact, almost all of his childhood memories (nightmares) about her included a metal trap around her head and clunky braces. "Yeah, I'll take the gay little shit. Get me the fuck outta this place."

Shelly's chair screeched as she shoved herself away from the table and Randy's sobbing apologies, stomping upstairs presumably to change. Her mousy brown hair was now dyed burgundy, several evil-looking piercings thrust through her face and ears, while her figure maintained a thin, boyish shape and flat chest. Most of the clothing Craig had seen her in was black and accented with hot pink and spiked chains, hardcore enough that she could probably make the Goth kids cry.

The dinner Sharon made had been good, but Craig felt very much like throwing it all back up again. Stan looked like he was considering the same option, or that could have been the blood loss.

"I'm sorry, dude," Stan muttered, stacking up dishes one-handed, since he was still bleeding through the towel he had held up to his nose. Craig helped him clean up, movements numb and mechanical, until Sharon shooed them away, their bare feet mashing peas into the carpeting that would be _hell_ to get out later.

Craig went to get his things from Stan's room, Stan following quietly behind like a one-man funeral procession. God, that jackass. They scurried past Shelly's room, some kind of death metal blaring behind the closed door, and ran into Stan's, shutting it behind them as useless protection if Shelly happened to own a chainsaw, which was not improbable.

Neither knew what to say in their possible last moments together, Craig dubiously eyeing the blood-soaked towel that seriously put him off of a goodbye kiss. Stan was holding himself distant too, probably freaked that his family knew about _them_ but, hello, way to be subtle when he was pouncing Craig every single time they were behind a closed door together.

"Craig, I--"

"Get the fuck outta there, twerp! I ain't got all night waiting for you two to finish making out!" Shelly yelled as she hammered on the door to Stan's room, making the thing shake in its wooden frame. A startled, distressing sound bubbled up from Stan's throat, wide-eyed and pale as he darted a look at Craig that let him know he was so on his own, sorry.

And Craig had thought _he_ was the bitch in their relationship.

"Whatever, dude. See you tomorrow," Craig muttered dubiously, flipping Stan's pussy ass off and opening the door. He released an embarrassingly relieved breath when Shelly wasn't on the other side waiting with a chainsaw, but looked both ways down the hallway just to be sure.

Somehow Craig made himself leave the questionable safety of Stan's room, the Marsh's house, and walk himself to Sharon's hybrid minivan already running in the driveway. Heavy metal music that bordered satanic assaulted him as he opened the passenger's side door, slid stiffly into the seat, and strapped himself in tightly. He closed his eyes and tried not to picture the expression on Stan's face like he was never going to see Craig alive again.

Shelly sped backwards out the driveway without even looking behind her, Craig's hands slamming up against the dashboard to catch himself as the seatbelt bit sharply into his chest. Shelly shifted gears and waited until they were at least out of eyesight before she made a fist and smashed it against Craig's shoulder without any freaking warning.

"Goddamnit you crazy bitch!" Craig yelped, clutching his shoulder and leaning as far away from her as he possibly could without hurling himself out of the moving vehicle.

"Shut up, fucker. That was for kicking me," Shelly sneered, but she sounded less homicidal and more of her usual pissed-off self. She relaxed her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel slightly, but didn't try to hit him again.

Craig was on his guard just in case though.

His mouth was tight and pinched as he pressed himself against the door, one eye on the road and one on Shelly the entire time, giving himself a headache quickly with the stress and strain. The drive felt longer than it had with Stan's dad, neither of them saying anything, and Craig just prayed that he made it home in enough pieces that they'd have _something_ to put in his casket.

"What are your intentions towards Stan?" Shelly barked at him after a few uncomfortable moments of not-speaking when Craig had hopefully began to think that maybe she'd forgotten he was there.

"Er..." Craig glanced at her cautiously as she lit up a cigarette pulled from her dyed hair in the enclosed, meticulous interior of the van, using both hands to hold the cigarette and flick on her lighter while they drove past a stop sign without stopping. He flinched when she shot him a deadly glare from the corner of her raccoon-smudge eyes, but he hesitantly realized that she might possibly be the crazy protective older sibling to Stan that he was to his own little sister, Dot. Except Shelly was a lot scarier and more effective than he was.

"Well, gee..." Craig started slowly, thinking the fastest way to get punched again was to actually admit how much he wanted to, how much they _did_ have sex at any available opportunity. "I don't know. I'm thinking probably married with two-point-five kids, a little gay dog, and a picket fence sometime within the next twenty years. Wanna throw the bridal shower?" Craig almost bit his tongue through, a smartass by default, especially when he was nervous.

Shelly snorted and flicked the ash from the glowing tip of her cigarette, making no move to haul the van off the road and beat the shit out of Craig for giving the wrong answer. "Whatever, homos."

Craig smirked outright, closing his eyes as he dropped his head back against the headrest. He was queasy and tense from the wild car ride, but he didn't think Shelly was outright trying to kill him anymore. He didn't get too comfortable though, not when Shelly tried to drop him off personally at his doorstep. She barely swerved in time to avoid taking out the Tuckers' mailbox, leaving tire marks on their lawn as she popped open the door and jabbed her thumb in a motion for Craig to get the hell out before the van even came to a complete stop.

The twisted ankle was worth his continued existence, even though he immediately moved away from the front door - after slamming it behind him - flimsy protection against a hybrid van traveling at high speeds with a crazy bitch behind the wheel.

Shelly did _not_ have to tell him to get out twice.

\--

During the following days at school, Stan and Craig weren't nearly as subtle as Stan had deluded himself into thinking they were.

Even when they weren't in class together, Stan was always fucking staring at Craig, just like he was always biting him when they were by themselves. He didn't have a worried frown or a creepy-ass smile or anything, but he was just awkwardly intense like it wasn't enough that he had to mark and claim Craig up and down, inside and out, but had to know where he was at all times too.

Craig didn't even try glaring back at him to get Stan to stop, because that crazy fucker would just keep _looking_ at him even when he knew he was caught.

The staring didn't annoy Craig as much as he thought it should have. Stan's clear blue eyes were a warm weight he could set to the back of his mind, a kind of comfort that he had someone looking out for him unexpectedly, even though Stan was too much of a pussy to interfere if Craig happened to be a victim of some retarded hate crime. Craig didn't give a fuck because Stan was drawing more attention to himself staring Craig down like that, and after their scuffle on the bus Monday it was no wonder people were convinced they either had it out for each other, or were just incredibly gay.

Stan was so goddamn possessive, and it wasn't even like Craig was in high demand or flighty enough to fuck off with some other jock, but he couldn't deny it felt embarrassingly good to be wanted that much. They weren't all over each other with people around, and didn't share lingering touches or longing glances either. Basically they functioned as normally as possible, aside from Stan's freakish staring, except during their lunch hour when they went off together.

Stan at least relented and let Craig grab a sandwich first when they began regularly meeting up in the shop classroom. But eventually Craig got fed up with Stan's impatient shepherding and just brought his own goddamn lunch from home, scrounging every possible minute together that they could. For the short lunch hour they sometimes just sat close together, nibbling on their food and talking about nothing. Other times they molested the CPR dummy Craig had nicknamed Stanley just to piss the real Stan off, or they curled up in a corner and necked furtively when they just couldn't keep their hands to themselves.

They avoided kissing right off because both of them knew how quickly their making out could last for hours and just as easily dissolve into carnal, rutting sex. The little bit of teasing had to last them at least until they got to Stan's house, and then they were all over each other like they'd been depraved for weeks.

After they did their homework first, of course.

Endless days of sheer _wanting_ trickled into a week, and then two as Stan and Craig became more entangled in each other and went M.I.A without explanation from most of their regular after school and weekend hang outs. Craig even found himself outside in the bitter cold, freezing his skinny ass to the metal bleachers waiting for Stan's football practice to wrap up on Tuesdays and Thursdays, his games taking place every other Saturday.

Craig hadn't been able to bring himself to the actual games yet, but he showed up at the tail-end of enough practices that he wondered if he should take up smoking under the bleachers and dyeing his hair to fit in with the Goth crowd, or wear a mini skirt and pom poms to blend in with the cheerleaders, but realized he didn't give a damn anyway. _They_ weren't the ones he couldn't tear his eyes away from, and would be going home with after practice was over.

The fresh cut grass and churned soil flavors that rubbed into Stan's sweaty skin after playing hard was heady and unbelievable, raw without anything artificial about how good he smelled and tasted. Stan at least toweled off so the beads of sweat that ran down his forehead and the back of his neck didn't sour, leaving his skin salty and sharp under Craig's tongue with tastes that overfilled his nostrils and the back of his throat.

Craig imagined how Stan couldn't possibly hide the signs of their raw, violent fucking when he dressed down and showered with his teammates in the locker rooms. There were scratches down his back that fit Craig's fingernails, hickies that matched his mouth, fingerprints and bruises that Craig could touch and overlap like puzzle pieces falling into place. He imagined Stan forgetting himself and dropping something - his shoe or a shoulder pad or, shit, even the freaking soap in the shower - and baring the stretched, puffy ring of his tender asshole for anyone to see when he bent over to pick it up.

Craig wasn't in any better condition, but at least he didn't have to expose himself in a locker room full of naked testosterone and wet, snapping towels either.

For the first couple days, _weeks_ , of their 'honeymoon stage' Stan and Craig could do nothing else except kiss touch and fuck each other's brains out once they were in their safe, shameless retreat they'd made of Stan's room. Craig was consciously oblivious about his degree of infatuation - choosing not to acknowledge how far gone he was, and therefore made no effort to hold himself back. Both had developed a tendency to fuck off any other obligations or activities in order to fuck each other, with the exception of Stan's football practice that not even Craig could come between - if either of them valued their lives.

Craig even had to tell Stan to answer his phone once before when it rang three times in a row, _Kyle Broflovski_ flashing urgently on the screen's digital display.

"He can wait," Stan muttered dismissively and turned his phone on silent, which was a completely douchebag move, even Craig had to admit. Craig wasn't going to complain, though, especially when Stan's head had ducked back between his legs, mouth too busy for talking.

After a few weeks, when they could manage to ease up off each other for up to half-hour increments at a time, Stan and Craig tried slotting in _other_ non-physical activities while just being together. They'd start up in opposite places to watch a movie on Stan's flat screen or computer monitor, one on the bed and the other on the desk chair or floor, and barely make it through the credits and intro before they were plastered together and making out heatedly, movie forgotten.

Eventually they gave into their inevitable magnetism, Craig making himself comfortable on the bed between the 'v' of Stan's legs, leaning back against his chest with Stan's arm slung low around his waist as they cuddled together in the least gay way possible. They managed longer when they didn't deny themselves even the most platonic contact, but still...eventually, Stan's hand would make its way down the front of Craig's pants and they both lost focus on the movie and became more interested in watching Stan jack him off instead.

Craig's breathing hitched and he tipped his head back against Stan's shoulder, shutting his eyes away so he couldn't see himself when he came, but he knew damn well where Stan's eyes were fixed during the money shot. Craig's sweatpants, sans underwear, were pushed down his thighs, his knees spread as far apart as he could manage when the elastic waistband had no more room to stretch. He curved into himself as he slowly slid down Stan's chest and hitched his hips upwards when Stan released his softening cock, his wet fingers pressing in behind Craig's balls and sliding in with an ease that came from hours and hours of relentless usage.

When Craig was ready and wet enough _after_ Stan got the real lube to slick himself up with (Craig wasn't playing that shit) they fucked to Craig's hentai tentacle porn in the background. They only paused once for Stan's howls of laughter when Craig made sounds that unintentionally mimicked the sluttish Japanese schoolgirl's cries as she was tangled up and fucked by monster vines on the glowing computer monitor.

They were resigned towards being r-tards and unrepentant queermos when they were together, even going so far as to attempt the You Are Fags! level on Guitar Hero, despite claiming that title thoroughly before the game had even started. It wasn't Craig's fault that Stan looked super fucking hot with a guitar, despite the instrument being fake and plastic and way too small to even pass for a real one.

Games of World of Warcraft led to arranging their characters into compromising positions, Craig's Rogue Orc virtually sodomizing Stan's Human Warrior, or vice versa, while they typed out dirty talk in the dialogue box.

[siagfh69craig]: i'm jacking off right now

[Staniscool]: Ok, liar. Whats up w/ ur screen name?

[siagfh69craig]: yes i am, stanley. im thinkin of ur pretty mouth on my cock while i touch myself. And it stands 4 Stan is a giant flaming homo that 69s craig's awesome manly orc ;-)

[Staniscool]: Goddamnit Craig! Stfu

[siagfh69craig]: dont be ashamed baby. u should see me rite now naked and dripping and all hot 4 u

[Staniscool]: No ur not

[siagfh69craig]: fuck u stan. how do u know i'm not

"Because you're right behind me, fucktard!" Stan snapped, glaring over his shoulder from his computer desk and directly behind him at Craig, fully clothed and sitting on his made-up bed, typing away serenely at the Mac notebook in his lap.

"I think the concept of cybering completely goes over your head, Stanley," Craig muttered, missing the agitated roll of Stan's eyes as Stan logged off Warcraft and started shutting down his whole computer. "Hey! I didn't even get to come yet," Craig whined, scooting over when Stan came over and sat down on the bed with him, putting his hand against Craig's thigh.

"No, don't touch me. I'm still playing." Craig's finger roamed over the laptop's touchpad, eyes glued to the heavy graphics on the screen.

"Wouldn't you rather come for real?" Stan insinuated in an awkward tone, frustrated and amused at what a nerd Craig had turned out to be. He made another grab for him when Craig didn't answer, yelping in surprise when Craig clocked him in the chin with his shoulder as he quickly twisted himself out of reach.

"Goddamnit! No means no!" Craig wouldn't let go of the fucking laptop even after Stan fell on top of him, both of them cursing and neither willing to give in first.

"Ghhn. Freaking cow..." Craig grumbled, out of breath after their short, heated tousle where he ended up on his stomach with Stan half-sprawled on top of him, and sighed when Stan situated himself with his arms wrapped around his waist and pillowed his head against Craig's bare back where his shirt had ridden up. Craig pretended to play for a little while longer just to piss Stan off by ignoring him, but he struggled again when Stan became lax and heavier, obviously making use of Craig's indifference at the moment.

"Hey," Craig said vaguely, frowning as he finally logged off and pushed the laptop away. He jostled Stan sharply when he didn't respond, waking him the fuck up and smirking at Stan's pissy grumbling. "I'm sorry... Were you comfortable, sweetheart?"

"No, you're too fucking skinny," Stan replied, flatly enough that it took Craig several seconds to process. That asshole just snuggled his cheek against his too-sharp shoulder blade, thinking he could go back to taking a nap.

"What the hell, Stan!" Craig yelled with hot cheeks, throwing himself to the side and shoving Stan off at the same time, kicking at him for good measure. "Then go fuck a fat kid, chubby chaser! _Christ_."

Stan just smirked and caught Craig's thrashing body up underneath his own, making a grab for the expensive laptop before it fell off the side of the bed, and managed to set the computer down on the floor before they broke it first. Craig was cursing him to high hell, smushed and suffocated beneath Stan's full weight, and debasing every one of Stan's ancestors back five generations while he was at it. Stan just let Craig run out of hot air own his own and sedated him the best way he knew how when the feisty bastard exhausted himself.

Craig bit at him when Stan tried to kiss him the first few times, like a fucking snapping turtle or something, but clutched at him and stabbed into Stan's mouth with his tongue after Stan shifted their hips and pinched his nipple warningly.

They managed a fumbling round of their game of choice, Craig finally managing to pwn Stan in gay rock-paper-scissors after their heated making out where he had promptly forgotten (again) why he was so pissed off at him in the first place. Craig wrapped himself around Stan's back in a reversed position, getting him up on his hands and knees as he took him from behind, whispering vile things into his ear that got Stan even more worked up than assaulting his nipples did, but Craig didn't leave those tender babies out either.

"God, Stan..." Craig groaned expertly even without the anime in the background that time. "Your pussy is so _fuckin_ ' tight. You're so hot, baby...yeah, my pretty little girlfriend just taking it...such a _slut_..."

Stan pretty much came all over himself after a few thrusts - much quicker than he'd anticipate if Craig would just shut up and fuck him. "Stop saying that shit!" Stan complained when Craig finished up in him soon after, his face furiously red as he struggled and reached underneath the bed to swipe the crusty old towel that they used for half-ass clean ups.

Craig grabbed the towel from Stan's hands and rubbed it against his damp crotch, throwing the towel back over the bed and pushing at Stan to lay on his back, still a mess.

"Why, because you like it so much?" Craig smirked, leering self-satisfactorily. "My pretty pretty princess _Stanley_..."

Stan growled and yanked Craig forward on top of him, getting him dirty again from the spooge still sticking to his stomach. Craig opened his mouth to bitch him out, but Stan reared up and caught at his lips with teeth and tongue before he could. Craig gave a pained moan and pressed back against Stan harder, opening his mouth for him and fisting his hands in Stan's black hair as they kissed furiously. Stan's hands clenched on Craig's ass and dragged him forward, Craig's legs going separate ways as he pressed his knees to either side of Stan's hips and followed the momentum.

They kissed until their lips felt chapped and close to splitting, especially with their overzealous use of teeth. Stan was seriously turning into a wannabe vampire with the way his bites were getting hard enough to almost break skin once he realized how rough Craig liked it.

"I'm going to find something to get you off twice as fast as you do me," Stan threatened, licking his tongue against Craig's raw lips, which was adorable since Craig couldn't think of any better goal in life.

"How about you holding off longer than two minutes when we fuck?" Craig offered sarcastically. His hips jerked when Stan's hand came down hard and unexpected on his upturned ass, forcing a startled moan out of Craig. "Shit! Mmm yeah, baby, _beat_ me. You know how fuckin' hard I like it," Craig moaned and rocked his hips theatrically, stuttering off into laughter at the unamused glare Stan gave him.

"I'm _serious_ ," Stan said, exasperated like it was his fault or something that Craig didn't get off on assfucking alone. He even used the goddamn KY!

"Yeah yeah," Craig bantered, grinning and kissing Stan carefully as he touched on his swollen lips. "And I'm serious about working on your lasting ability, huh?"

Craig's laughter was full and throaty when Stan just growled at him like a barbarian, using his macho football skills to push Craig beneath him, cutting off his laughter with a deep, challenging kiss.


	10. Blackout

One day, out of the blue during one of their stolen lunch hours, Craig admitted his affair with the CPR dummy stashed away in the shop classroom to Stan.

"I don't know, man..." Craig sighed, leaning against Stan's shoulder as he looked down at the dummy Stan had pulled out to demonstrate what kind of bullshit they were actually learning in shop class. Craig doubted Stan even knew how to turn _on_ a freaking table saw, much less use one. "Just something about that deep, gaping mouth and plastic eyes and how he just kinda cuts off at the waist just really...mmm..."

"Dude! Cut it out," Stan grimaced, knocking his shoulder hard into Craig's and causing him to sprawl partially on top of the dummy, laughing his ass off.

"Oh baby, don't be jealous. Stanley here's only half the man you are..." Craig fake-squirmed, running his fingers over the dummy's chest, rubbing lewdly at its synthetic nipples. Who the hell gave CPR manikins nipples in the first place?

"Don't call him - it - Stanley! That's just creepy."

Craig grinned and ducked Stan's half-heartedly swung fist. He shifted up on his knees and straddled 'Stanley's' chest, looking down at _him_ curiously. "You know...he kind of does look like you. With that perfect cock-sucking mouth and all."

Stan groaned, flipping his middle finger out at Craig who just laughed again and made himself disturbingly comfortable on top of the dummy. Really, its hard plastic mouth _was_ somewhat reminiscent of a blowup doll, or at least Stanley and a blowup doll could have been close relatives.

" **Dude**! What the hell are you doing?!" Stan yelped, seeing Craig shamelessly tug down his fly before he stuck his whole hand down his pants when there was enough room, fishing out his cock.

"What does it _look_ like I'm doing, Stan? I'm gonna fuck this bitch's face."

Stan couldn't help laughing in disbelief, squirming where he sat. "That's disgusting! We put our mouths on that!" Craig was such a sick fucker.

Craig shot Stan a flat look, his fingers curled around his cock pulled through the slit of his underwear, as he gave himself a slow stroke from root to tip. "You put your mouth here too, babe," Craig purred, rubbing the head of his cock against Stanley's fake pink plastic lips, moaning dramatically.

"Oh god, Stanley, yes! God...your _mouth.._."

The spongy tip slid in past the gaping opening, Craig actually getting half-hard with Stan staring at him all hot and disbelieving. He felt warm and flushed, fumbling to unzip his coat, and dragged his shirt up with one hand flat on his belly to give Stan a little show. He moaned softly at the way Stan's eyes sharpened on him, darkening, and Craig rocked his hips a little more, his cock sliding into Stanley's surprisingly deep mouth.

"God Stan..." Craig murmured, looking right at him and wanting. Stan reached towards him like he couldn't resist, and Craig leaned forward eagerly, his dick slicking up the smooth, hollow tube of Stanley's plastic throat with precome.

"... _Enough_ ," Stan said gruffly, abruptly shoving Craig off the fucking dummy where he went sprawling in an ungainly heap with an offended squawk, dick bouncing out of his pants. "Get off him - it - Craig!" Stan's face was red and uncomfortable, hilariously flustered that Craig really went that far with his joke.

"I _was_ trying to get off, douchebag!" Craig glared and tucked himself back in his jeans, struggling to sit up as he punched Stan's shoulder for pushing him. He could have broken his dick, or something just as vital. "Ch'. Like you guys really know CPR anyway. You'd probably kill the first person that choked on a peanut."

Stan threw Craig a contemplative look, annoyed, but thinking. "Bet you I can do CPR," he challenged, sounding self-righteous and determined to prove Craig wrong.

"Betcha can't. Poor Stanley here already looks like your class let him die at least fifty times over," Craig said sadly, patting the dummy's meaty chest, and then rubbed his thumb sheepishly against a wet smear on the corner of Stanley's lips.

"Seriously!"

"Seriously my ass!"

"C'mon, I'll prove it." Stan held his hands out towards Craig, eyebrows lifted stubbornly. "I'll do CPR on you."

"Yeah right. You're just looking for an excuse to make out with me," Craig snorted, fending off Stan's grabby hands. "And how are you going to do CPR anyway? By choking me unconscious or something?"

"Yeah."

Craig's laughter stuttered in his throat, swallowing as he swung his head around to look at Stan sharply. "What the fuck, dude?" He got that he could be an asshole sometimes, but he didn't think that was any reason for Stan to want to strangle him literally.

Stan huffed, flushing, but held his hand out to Craig again. "You've heard of the choking game, right? Kids do it all the time. The worst that'll happen is that you'll get a little high and lightheaded."

"Haven't people, like, _died_ from playing that?" Craig asked nervously, looking at the crappy old dummy on the floor and wondering how the hell anyone could learn CPR accurately with Stanley the blowup doll as the practice model.

"Are you _scared_?" Stan taunted, smirking patronizingly.

"Fuck no!" Craig furrowed his eyebrows, about to say more, but what the hell. Stan wouldn't really hurt him and it would probably take only a few minutes at most anyway, despite the whole dare being incredibly stupid.

"Fine, bitch, whatever. What do I do?"

After shoving Stanley out of the way, Craig took his place on his back on the cement floor, Stan's hand pushing open his coat and tugging restlessly at the neck of Craig's t-shirt.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" Craig asked nervously, lips barely moving. He took a shuddering breath as Stan's hand curved over his throat and stared up at the bruise on Stan's neck just behind his ear that he couldn't hide with his hair or shirt collar.

"Relax," Stan murmured, feeling Craig's pulse quicken beneath his palm and fingers as he squeezed experimentally and then released as Craig took a deep, shaky breath. "Ready?"

Craig was a little comforted by Stan's confidence, and by the fact Craig trusted him pretty much with everything involving his body, but he was still nervous as hell. "What. No goodbye kiss?" Craig joked weakly, swallowing around the grip on his throat that steadily tightened, Stan's blue eyes boring into him.

He felt Stan's lips brush against his own, stealing away his last gasp as his head went too warm, too heavy inside. It didn't take long for his vision to fuzz out around the edges, Stan's face becoming blurry before his consciousness blacked out and succumbed to the pressure.

\--

Craig woke up to hard, harsh shoves steadily pushing into his chest. After a few seconds he could make out Stan muttering some song beneath his breath, forgetting lyrics and slipping up as the pressure became more erratic, frantic against his chest.

Craig felt his lungs expand with air, Stan's mouth crushing his, and abruptly started coughing like someone had held him underwater and then fucking kicked him in the chest. Stan jerked back as Craig gasped desperately for air between his wracking coughs. It'd serve the fucker right if Craig coughed right into his mouth.

Stan's hands were pushing at him, shoving him over to his side and hitting his back as Craig coughed until there were tears running down his cheeks, unable to bitch out Stan for being so freaking abusive, christ. Stan finally eased up when Craig's coughs tapered off to let rasping breaths in, and allowed Craig to flop back over onto his back, exhausted and panting like he'd done more than just pass out for a few minutes and wake up again. He ached and his head was blazing behind his eyes, generally feeling like shit - _not_ high like Stan had said.

Stan was weirdly pale and shaken when Craig squinted up at him, the dull florescent lighting feeling harsh against his reflexively tearing retinas. "Stan...'sup wi...you?" Craig asked, his voice breathless and slurring. It hurt to swallow.

"Dude, you...you weren't waking up." Stan raked a trembling hand through his hair, before he dropped it down with a painful thunk on Craig's chest, groping and feeling at Craig's neck for, like, a _pulse_ even though Craig was laying there looking at him and fucking _talking_.

"I-I think we need to take you to the hospital, Craig. You--"

" _What_?!" Craig said harshly, wincing as the word grated his raw throat. "Nn...no...'spittle..."

No fucking way was he being hauled off to Hell's Pass Hospital like he'd been on the verge of death instead of just having been a dumbass and gone along with Stan's little choking game. All he had was a nauseating headache and just felt really, really tired all of a sudden - no worse than the last time he'd caught the flu.

"Craig..." Stan stared at him, looking seriously freaked and about ten seconds from throwing up, which made Craig inch away from him in case Stan got to thinking about retaliation for Craig coughing in his mouth. "At least...you need to go to the school nurse. C'mon, dude."

Craig groaned, protesting, but he felt like a limp dick with Stan manhandling him into a sitting position, slumping against his shoulder as his mouth brushed that sweet bite on Stan's neck. He grinned tiredly, wondering if the fag even knew Craig's mark was right there on display for everyone to see.

Somehow Craig had made his shuffling way to the nurse's office, Stan's arm tight around his waist and walking close enough to trip Craig up every few steps, as if he wasn't having a hard enough time trying to keep his balance. The nurse took one look at Craig and gasped, herding him onto a cot with a million questions that he couldn't answer, that Stan _wouldn't_ answer with the way he held his back ridged and mouth tight.

Craig wanted to gasp right back at her, never getting used to the dead, wrinkly baby attached to the side of her head.

The conjoined fetus lady eventually gave up and gave Craig a compress for his throat, raw and red on the outside like a rash or burn. Stan refused to go back to class, screeching a hard chair across the floor to pull up right next to Craig's bed, stubbornly gripping his hand even when Craig half-heartedly tried to shake him off, cheeks flushed.

They stayed in the nurse's office until school was over, Stan never leaving his side or releasing his hand or even looking away. Craig was cranky and tired almost to the point of tears when the last bell rung since Stan had kept fucking shaking him awake every time he drifted off.

"Hate you...so fuckin' much," Craig dry-sobbed when Stan woke him up for the nth time in several hours, wishing he had the strength to choke Stan unconscious so he could freaking take a nap, holy hell.

"School's over," Stan said quietly, his hand hot and sweaty where it gripped at Craig's relentlessly. "We need to get to the bus so you can sleep at home."

Craig severely doubted Stan would let him sleep even there, but then again he could probably play the pity card with Sharon and get Stan off his back for a little while if he didn't stop being such a douche. Christ! He was acting like Craig had gotten a concussion, or _died_ or something.

Stan only left him long enough to retrieve their backpacks from the shop classroom, but only when he was certain the nurse would be there watching over Craig like he was a part of some kind of annoying episode of Big Brother that he couldn't remember signing up for, but without the cameras.

They rode the bus home together, which they never did after Craig had put his foot down on Stan's possessiveness and made him ride with his own damn friends. They pressed up together in one of the seats near the back since they were one of the first students on the bus for once. Stan's arm was curled protectively around his waist, Craig's head tucked against his shoulder with his eyes closed against the stares they were surely getting as the rest of their classmates climbed aboard and filled up the seats around them.

Craig thought he might have dozed off during the ride, but seriously doubted it the way Stan had taken to sleep-depriving him. He blinked his eyes open, feeling Stan's lips pressing softly against the top of his head, moving almost soundlessly. "We're here. Let's go..."

Craig stood up carefully after his head quit spinning for a second, wordlessly making his way off of the bus at Stan's stop which had become habit during the past few weeks. His steps were lethargic and ungainly, but he didn't need Stan to help him walk as they slowly moved towards his house, their book bags carried in each of Stan's hands. At the house, Sharon took one look at Craig and immediately ordered him to bed, much like the nurse had. Craig could have fallen at her feet and babbled in gratitude, sending warning glares Stan's way.

"I'll send up some chicken soup and aspirin with Stan while you go rest, Craig. Stanley, you leave that poor boy alone, you hear me?" Sharon said firmly, and it was a close call on which Marsh Craig was more in love with at that moment.

"Yes, Mom," Stan grumbled, even though he kept sneaking those openly worrying glances at Craig that were quickly beginning to grate on his nerves.

Craig made his way to Stan's room without waiting for him, tempted to lock the door, but he grimaced to himself at the kind of commotion Stan would only make then if he did. He stripped down to his underwear and climbed under Stan's cool sheets that began to warm quickly with his higher temperature, out in seconds.

He didn't wake up when Stan came in and set down the tray with steaming Campbell's on his computer desk, but his body shifted automatically in his sleep when Stan climbed into bed with him moments later, equally sans of clothing, but with only chaste intentions.

Stan held Craig against his bare chest with his arms wrapped as tightly around him as he dared. He stroked his fingers through Craig's sweat-damp hair and pressed his lips against the curve of his neck, feeling his strong, steady pulse against the side of his mouth. He held him quietly until the slashes of light behind his blinds faded into darkness, Craig eventually stirring in Stan's arms and resettling with a deep sigh.

"Creep. Don' watch me...in my sleep," Craig complained in a strained whisper, voice hoarse and scratchy, but less disoriented than he had been.

Stan only breathed against the side of his overly hot neck, tilting his head to kiss Craig's flushed cheek, his eyelids, and his forehead as Craig just sighed and listed against him.

He felt a little better after finally getting to rest with Stan, although the overbearing douche made him eat some of the soup his mom had him bring up earlier that had gone cold and congealed. There was also some tepid tea with honey in it that he choked down with a couple aspirin. He wondered if Stan had told his mom that Craig was only sick with a sore throat or that he'd practically strangled him.

He hoped Stan had learned his lesson about cheap, retarded ways to get high, even though Craig himself was now eight years sober from abusing cough medicine as a kid. He realized that day was the first since he and Stan had hooked up that they hadn't had sex...hadn't even really _kissed_ other than Stan's failed attempt at showing off his CPR skills. Craig hoped this wasn't an oncoming sign of relationship counseling or potential buttbuddy intervention, even though his body didn't feel up to much else except more sleep.

It was still a school night so Craig's lethargic body was eventually packed into the van with Shelly taking him home as the lesser evil between her and Randy. He slumped against the door with his head against the icy window, nearly moaning at how good the cold felt.

"Christ. What the hell happened to your neck?" Shelly backed out of the driveway with her usual caution, Craig quickly pulling his head away from the glass so it didn't go _through_ the window.

"Nothing," he mumbled, low and dismissive, and kept his gaze turned outside. Shelly snorted and they ignored each other for the rest of the ride to Craig's house, even though her pierced brow was furrowed disconcertingly.

\--

Craig tiredly slammed the door closed behind him as he trudged inside with his muddy boots. He didn't speak to his dad, who was still up when he came in. Thomas's overweight body was more of a fixture in the living room than their couch was, his bulky figure outlined in a sickly blue glow from the television screen while his thumb clicked robotically on the channel key through endless infomercials.

Craig thought he could bypass him like he always did and shut himself up in his room without a word to anybody else, but of course when he wanted people to leave him alone the most was when everyone was on his ass for something.

"Where have you been, boy? Don't think you can just come waltzing in at any hour. There are rules around this house!" His dad's glazed eyes never left the television screen while he bitched at Craig, his tone too harsh and too practiced not to have come without some harping from his mom.

"Fuck you bitch. I can," Craig muttered back, throwing his middle finger out in his dad's direction as he took off his hat and coat and dropped his shit in a heap on the floor.

His dad grunted, possibly figuring he'd done his obligated job as a parent and the wife would quit riding his huge ass about their M.I.A child. What did it matter where Craig went when it was one less mouth to feed and diaper to change, although it was possible Craig had outgrown that stage already.

"Where _have_ you been?" Thomas asked, actually sounding curious as he paused for a mid-second between changing channels.

"Fucking some guy at school. My boyfriend, I guess."

Craig blanched the second the word left his mouth, but it was too late for him to take back now. Fuck it, he and Stan were already that gay, might as well have a label for their advanced level of faggotry.

"Goddamnit! There will be no faggots in this house, boy!" Thomas yelled unnecessarily loud, Craig yelling right back at him despite the glass and nails feeling cutting into his throat from straining his voice so hard.

"Then you'd better get your fat ass packin', homo!"

Their fingers strained in a severe effort to flip each other off the hardest, Craig's dad actually dropping the remote to double his attack with both hands.

"Oh, for heaven's sake! Dottie's trying to sleep without you two loud mouths waking her, so shut the hell up already!" Craig's mom came down stairs with her bathrobe pulled tight around her slender form, her mouth pinched and frowning. "Thomas, come to bed before you burn your eyes out, you fat bastard," Cheryl muttered the last under her breath, except it was less of a mutter than it was spoken quiet clearly, accentuated with her own delicately manicured 'fuck you.'

Craig glared smugly at his dad, shoving his fists into his pockets before he sprained his middle fingers again.

"Craig, you're getting home too late on a school night. There's a plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes in the microwave for you." His mom frowned and pressed her hand to Craig's clammy cheek, able to tell how pale he was even in the dim lighting. "Honey, you look like hell. Maybe you should take off from school tomorrow..."

"No, Mom," Craig said with an irritated groan, removing his hand from his pocket to push her hand away. "I'm just gonna go to bed. I'm _fine_."

"It's probably that boy he's fucking!" his dad shot in, giving Craig a narrow-eyed, triumphant look from his piggy face. "Gave him the gay disease. AIDS or something!"

"Shut the fuck up, fatass!" Craig yelled hoarsely, flushing hotly at the accusation. They all winced and lowered their tones when a warbling, piercing cry drifted down from his little sister's room upstairs.

"Fucking great, you assholes. I'm going to bed." Craig grabbed his backpack and stomped up the stairs to leave his parents to fight it out in the living room, shaking his head as his mom's disjointed voice drifted up the stairs before he could shut his parents out.

"Well at least he's getting some! You can just sleep on the couch tonight!"

Craig's slamming door was echoed minutes later in his parents' room. He knew it was only a matter of time before he'd hear the sound of the TV clicking off, and his dad's heavy, sheepish footsteps come upstairs. The Tuckers all had that quick explosive anger, but they were even quicker to forget and cool off with a switch that bordered bipolar disorder.

Craig started when he realized the crying from his sister's room hadn't stopped, feeling a guilty tug in his chest that his parents were that oblivious. Poor kid. Dot was the only one that didn't drive him half crazy in this house, even though she gave as good as she got with the cussing and middle fingers, despite her only being ten years old. After quickly changing into his pajamas, he shuffled quietly down the hallway and knocked softly at Dot's hideously pink door, decorated with bright big polka dots, which was only a taste of what was inside.

When he heard a sniffling whimper on the other side that somehow sounded welcoming despite the sad tone, he pushed open her door, leaving it open a crack so the hallway light could filter in despite her claims that she didn't need a nightlight anymore. She looked ridiculously tiny in that big canopied bed of hers, the slice of light reflecting off her shining eyes. Her red hair was tangled and her face was blotchy from crying, looking an absolute mess, but Craig knew she was going to be a looker like their mom had been when she was younger.

Thank god she didn't have tits yet though - Craig was going to have a time beating them off with sticks when Dottie got older, that was for sure. Maybe he'd even enlist Shelly for older sibling advice, although he didn't necessarily want to end up on America's Most Wanted.

"Quit crying, you faker," Craig said, his mouth tugging upward when Dot gave an overdone sigh and grinned widely back at him, scarily convincing when she could make herself cry on demand just to fuck with their parents, most times.

"Jesus, what was it this time? I thought Dad was gonna rip your balls off. Or whatever balls you have left, pussy," Dot taunted, sticking her tongue out at Craig when he shook a warning fist at her.

"Smart-mouthed tramp! Nah, he just had his panties in a bunch since I'm...seeing...someone at school." Craig shrugged, his cheeks going red. "A guy, I guess. Stan Marsh."

"Ohhh! _Homo_ ," Dot accused as she clapped her small hands together in delight and then patted the space next to her in her too-large bed, eager for gossip. "He's cute. Details!"

Craig rolled his eyes and made his way over to the bed, dropping down on the mattress hard enough to make the bed bounce and bowl Dottie over. She giggled and threw herself at him, snuggling up against his arm and pillowing her head on his shoulder. Craig bitched and tousled with her good-naturedly, letting her use him as a teddy bear this time, since he hadn't seen her much in the past few weeks because of all this gay business with Stan.

"Are you in looove?" Dot gushed after Craig had given her the briefest rundown of his and Stan's spastic relationship, leaving out pretty much anything that could be blackmail material. Basically he and Stan came off as chaste and wholesome individuals, waiting until marriage before they had consenting, adult relations together.

"Urgh, no." Craig pulled a face, looking away when Dot raised her eyebrow knowingly at him. "...I don't know. Maybe."

Craig's heart promptly gave a nauseating lurch and stuttered in annoyingly quick beats, shoving his hot face in one of Dot's overstuffed pillows as she laughed at him, wiggling when he poked her ribs viciously.

"And what about you, twerp? Any boyfriends I should know about?" Craig teased as he abruptly changed the subject, his fingers tangling up in Dot's ginger curls when she pillowed her head on his chest, tugging on her hair lightly.

She dug her chin into his chest and rocked her head tauntingly, saying in a singsong voice, "Maaaybe."

"You little skank!" Craig pounced and tickled her relentlessly, Dot shrieking until their parents' hollering came down the hall, both of them answering back with unseen middle fingers and a robust, simultaneous "Fuck you!" before shuffling back into quiet.

"I miss you," Dot whispered quietly when they settled back down, her cheeks adorably pink as she prodded Craig's chest shyly with her finger.

"I'm sorry, brat," Craig murmured back, meaning it since she really was a cool kid, and Craig didn't mind spending time with his little sister.

He was all wrapped up with Stan and couldn't manage to tear himself away, even after Stan had nearly strangled his ass. But whatever. Craig was fine now - other then his sore throat and being insanely tired - and just had something to tease Stan with later about his sucky safety procedures.

"Tell you what. I'll bring Stan over sometime and I'll let you two battle it out over me, all right?"

"Nah, he can have you, gaywad," Dot chirruped sassily.

"Hey!" Craig gasped, mocked-offended as he tickle attacked her until she was breathless from squeals and quickly exhausted, practically passing out in his arms. "Dork," he murmured affectionately, pressing a light kiss to her forehead that made her button nose crinkle up. He quietly snuck out of her room and into his own bed after tucking her back in.

He sent a jumbled text to Stan just before he crashed into his bed gratefully, not even waiting for a reply before he passed out for the second time that day.


	11. Game Over

Craig checked his phone in the morning by habit, frowning when he saw there were no new messages or calls from Stan that he might have slept through.

They actually didn't talk on the phone all that much, except for a few teasingly risqué texts and calls when, for whatever reason, they couldn't hang out together after school for long. Craig usually passed out as soon as he got home after being with Stan on those late, energetic nights, sometimes managing a snack and a shower, but usually too fucked out for either. It was kind of crazy how they could keep their distance just fine in public, but the second they were alone together they got all Dr. Jekyll on each other's asses. All that girly mushy affectionate shit came out with a vengeance then, but both of them were too far gone to care.

Craig didn't even try to talk or have more than juice for breakfast when he was up getting ready for school, but even that much hurt to swallow. He was still insensibly tired and dizzy, but he'd never been strangled before so he wasn't sure how long the side-effects were supposed to last. He was totally kicking Stan in the balls the next time he saw him, though, fuck that shit.

He inspected his throat in the bathroom mirror while brushing his hair and his teeth, his fingers easily overlapping the grotesque finger-shaped bruises that had gone a deep purple-black, edged in angry red. Those bruises looked fucking serious, especially against his white skin, and he had a nice matching set of handprints in the center of his chest where Stan had been doing the CPR compressions on him. Jesus christ. Craig didn't know if he'd actually stopped breathing yesterday, but he damn well _better_ have for how rough Stan had been with him.

He choked a little around his toothbrush, laughing at his reflection in the mirror that could've set him as the poster child for domestic violence. He wondered how many sympathy points he could wring out of Stan for this latest stunt, maybe even persuade him to throw the next two or ten gay rock-paper-scissor battles.

Craig finished getting ready for school, the house empty and silent since his dad went to work hellishly early and his mom drove Dottie to the elementary school usually before Craig even woke up. He was almost chronically running late because of his deep attachment to the snooze button.

His mom left a note on the fridge saying that she'd call the school if Craig decided he wasn't feeling better and wanted to stay home, which he threw away because he was freaking _fine_. She'd at least packed a lunch for him since he'd started bringing his own food instead of eating at school where lunch lines would only take away from his Stan time. And contracting diarrhea from the school's cafeteria lunches would be unfortunate considering their level of attachment to each other.

Craig bundled himself up for the cold day, forgoing a scarf and the top button on his coat because he couldn't stand to have any pressure against his mangled throat. He stopped short when he climbed aboard, startled when he saw that Stan was already there since they rode separate buses in the morning. Stan was in hushed conversation with Kyle in their usual seat, the empty space next to Stan occupied indifferently with his backpack.

Stan looked up automatically in Craig's direction when he came on, giving a start when he saw Craig's bare throat, and furrowed his eyebrows before he quickly glanced back to whatever Kyle was pointing out in one of their text books, not looking up again.

Despite he and Stan having ridden home together yesterday, it seemed like they were back to their usual public distance.

\--

Craig and Stan didn't share any morning classes, and they only passed each other briefly hurrying between bells, so Craig wouldn't really see him again until lunch time.

They had been meeting up in the shop classroom everyday by unspoken agreement, until going there just became their daily ritual at noon. Craig's locker was farther away than Stan's, so by the time he switched out his books and grabbed the lunch his mom had made for him, Stan was normally at the classroom a little before he was.

A weird feeling snuck up on Craig when Stan _wasn't_ there first, noting that the classroom floor had been swept and the CPR dummy was packed up out of sight. He waited five minutes, thinking Stan might have been held back in his last class for something, which wasn't improbable considering their focus had shifted into less academic pursuits lately. After ten minutes he became antsy, and at fifteen he was really fucking pissed off.

He checked his phone just to be sure, but there were no calls, no messages.

Nothing.

"Fuck this," Craig muttered to himself, grabbing his bag and storming out of the classroom. He wasn't going to eat lunch by himself like some emo douche, and headed for the cafeteria, figuring Stan could catch up to him or send him a text when he got his head out of his ass and let him know what was up.

Apparently Stan's head was buried deeper than Craig had thought, because he faltered when saw familiar back of Stan's head, topped with his stupid blue and red hat, already sitting at their former lunch table. Craig knew goddamn well Stan hadn't indicated a change of scenery to him, even if he was feeling guilty about returning to the scene of yesterday's barely-averted disaster.

Craig felt Stan's avoidance like a kick in the gut, overwhelmed with a rush of unbearable humiliation that he had all but admitted to his family last night that he was so _in love_ with his _boyfriend,_ Stan, and fuck whatever anyone else thought.

Craig choked on his anger, swallowing down every impulse that demanded he _break_ something or just go freaking apeshit, even though suppressing his rising hurt and anger was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do in recent memory.

He would let Stan have his goddamn bitch fit, but Craig wasn't going to any pains to accommodate him.

Craig strode over to the occupied lunch table in long, angry strides, glaring down at the person who had the misfortune to be sitting directly across from Stan. Butters nearly fell over himself to get out of the way, Craig lucky that it was that spineless goober instead of someone with an actual backbone, otherwise he would have been trying to shove his way between two immobile bodies like an asshole.

He slammed down his lunch and didn't start up conversation or even look up...just forced himself to tear open his bag and eat normally, even though swallowing hurt like hell when it felt like his throat was swelling shut. Stan sat there silently and stared across the table at him, Craig lifting his chin defiantly when he felt Stan's horrified gaze on the open ring of bruising around his neck.

Craig knew there was a scattering of teeth marks and softer, mouth-shaped bruises beneath the stark fingerprints on his neck, wondering how someone could leave marks of so much affection and violence and then ignore him entirely.

"What a lovely necklace your boyfriend has there, Stan," Cartman gushed in an overly-saccharine tone once he noticed what had captured Stan's attention so thoroughly, and took advantage of his distraction like a fucking fatass predator.

Stan flinched harshly and snapped his gaze away from his neck, although Craig couldn't tell if his reaction was for the necklace comment, or the insinuation that Craig was his boyfriend.

\--

Stan didn't invite him over his house again, didn't talk to him at school or even send him a fucking 'hey' on Warcraft, but he didn't go out of his way to avoid Craig either.

They passed each other in the hallways, sat at the same lunch table with the same group of friends, and didn't change seats during the few classes they shared. Basically, it was like the past three weeks hadn't happened at all, and absolutely nothing seemed to change from an outsider's perspective.

Except for Stan's goddamn staring.

Craig didn't know if it was some kind of intimidation tactic, but he'd been attuned to Stan's stunning blue-eyed gaze from the start, which would not let up on him for a second now once he was in Stan's line of sight. It drove him fucking crazy, especially since Stan wouldn't _talk_ to him, and he wouldn't look away even when Craig glared back. Craig could only manage eye contact for a few seconds before he averted his own dark eyes, angry and unbelievably confused.

Craig considered it a good thing that Stan hadn't seen the mass of bruising on his chest that matched the ones on his throat from Stan's violent, frantic compressions, or else Stan might not have even been _looking_ at him if he knew how far the external damage extended. Craig buttoned his coat up all the way and wore the goddamn scarf, but his consideration still didn't affect how cold Stan was acting towards him.

He knew goddamn well why Stan was avoiding him in the first place, after he'd suffocated Craig unconscious and obviously freaked out. But Stan was kind of a dick for abandoning him instead of straight up apologizing. The fucked up thing was that Craig didn't _need_ an apology, he kind of just wanted his stupid dumb jock back at that point where Stan's avoidance had been dragging on for _days_ , and he'd gotten used to having hot, frequent sex and shameless cuddling.

But this was Stan's issue, and Craig had his own stubborn pride, especially when he didn't do anything wrong, except for _letting_ Stan choke him, of course. He wouldn't make a move without Stan approaching him first, but he was killing Craig with how long he was taking to grow some fucking balls. Craig thought himself pretty damn good at feigning indifference at school and at home, looking blankly at Dot when she cautiously mentioned his sudden reappearance at the house after school, or asked how Stan was doing.

Craig wished he knew.

\--

He let Stan have his space for three fucking weeks.

Craig let him have his empty cell phone inbox, his conveniently blocked-off seat on the school bus, and his silent, endless staring. But at the beginning stretch of the fourth week, Craig's stiff walls slowly began to crumble when their separation continued without any signs of letting up. It was unthinkable that they would soon be broken up longer than they'd been together, harder for Craig to continue feigning indifference and actually think Stan was going to come around...

After another silent lunch where Craig was walking back to class by himself, his breath suddenly caught like a string snarled on a hook, unraveling without any warning. His next breath sounded wrenchingly like a sob, and suddenly he was outright fucking _crying_ with no provocation, no external factor to have set him off. Just big, ugly tears and a mad dash for the closest door to lock himself behind.

He groaned miserably at the familiar, empty shop room that he had to have run to by instinct as he slammed the door shut behind him. Craig knocked into tables, dropping his shit along the way until he stumbled blindly and hit the cement hard when he tripped over that stupid CPR dummy that someone had conveniently left out on the floor like a fucking retard. He punched viciously at Stan's version of a blowup doll, his fists making angry, sickening thumps in the synthetic flesh, until his punches became so erratic that he misaimed a throw and crushed his knuckles against the unforgiving cement.

Craig howled in pain and immediately stifled his cries with his bleeding knuckles, in the worst physical and emotional agony he'd ever felt. He got woodchips in his hair, blood on his face, and dirt all over his clothing as he curled around the beaten dummy and sobbed brokenly into its chest, trying so goddamn hard not to wish it was Stan instead.

\--

Craig pulled away and shut himself off from all contact with Stan. He woke up early to catch a ride with his mom and Dottie, holing himself in the library when he was at school way sooner than classes began, and actually did the homework he'd been slacking off on since he and Stan had hooked up.

He took different routes to avoid Stan in hallways, ate lunch by himself or - more often - not at all, skipped the classes they took together, and blocked Stan's number from his phone. Craig felt too angry and too hollow inside to be lovesick, figuring the endless longing and waiting around required a broader emotional spectrum and more patience than he had.

Stan was invisible to him when it was inevitable that they did cross paths, Craig maintaining no external or internal change that gave Stan or himself any inclination that he still cared about what the hell he did anymore.

He couldn't understand how someone could attract him so much, force Craig into being so blindly open and trusting when he was such an introverted, suspicious bastard to begin with. He couldn't imagine someone... _Stan_ wanting him to the point of blowing off everyone else, then one day put his hands around his neck, choke the breath out of him, and then leave him without any explanation. Craig was too stunned and too shocked to hurt, like the pain went so deep he couldn't even feel it.

Craig told himself he _wasn't_ moping over Stan when his appetite vanished completely and all he wanted to do was sleep. He had no memories of Stan in his house, in his bed, when all they'd ever done together had taken place either at school or at the Marsh's. His room became his refuge, his sheets relatively clean except when he'd laid in them so long without moving, without showering or getting up for anything except for when he absolutely had to, but his sheets still smelled like _him_ alone.

He counted his sudden depressing tiredness unrelated to his failed relationship, simply bored with World of Warcraft when he canceled his subscription, digging out a belt when his jeans began to slip off his hips entirely instead of just riding low, or how he completely ignored his reflection when the dark circles under his eyes were exacerbated by the waning paleness of his skin, looking fatigued despite how much he slept.

Craig didn't have anyone to be pretty for anyway.


	12. Reset

One month.

One month since Stan had choked Craig in their high school's shop classroom, their lunch time haven together, and left him without any word or explanation otherwise. One month since they last touched, last _talked_ , and only three weeks prior was all it had taken to set them up so deeply intertwined with each other that when everything came crashing down, they were shattered completely.

Craig didn't say a word to anyone, not to his old friends that he'd known almost all of his life, not to his parents, not even to his little sister Dot. She was beside herself at his spector-like appearance and attitude, practically out for Stan's blood despite her being seven years younger and still at their old elementary school.

Craig didn't think or feel anything other than the absolute minimum that was required of him to function in obligatory social settings when he couldn't hide himself away during school hours. His parents even came out of their distracted, indifferent non-interference in his life when they began receiving phone calls from teachers about Craig's distraction and complete lack of class participation. He also had numerous unexcused absences from his afternoon classes, even though, grudgingly, his work was always done and turned in on time.

His dad, Thomas, was all for a good old-fashioned beating to get Craig's head on straight, his mom wanting to send Craig to a therapist and counseling where they'd brain wash him and pump him full of drugs to make him at least artificially happy.

Craig didn't want that shit. He'd _had_ happy, and it made him the most miserable he'd ever been.

\--

He almost didn't see Stan when he walked past him in the mostly empty hall, not usually backtracking that way, but he'd forgotten a book in his locker to take with him to the library while he bailed on his afternoon classes.

Craig had gotten so accustomed to forcing himself to look right through Stan, willing his heart not to jump and keep moving forward, that he was nearly knocked off his feet when Stan grabbed his arm and forcefully swung him around against the wall.

"Where have you been?!" Stan pressed in on him accusingly, his fingertips and thumb almost meeting where they were wrapped around Craig's lean upper arm.

"Jesus christ!" Craig had the shit scared out of him, way too fucking weak to resist or lash out, but he was more startled by the rough, sudden outburst than actually afraid at what Stan would do to him. Was _capable_ of doing to him.

Craig wrenched his arm out of Stan's painful hold and tucked it defensively against his chest, feeling sluggish sparks of anger and confusion rise up in him like he'd been drugged all this time and his reactions were out of sync, his voice coming out tired and vague from misuse. "What the fuck, Stan? Piss off."

Craig turned to leave, not up for Stan's bullshit, but he flinched violently when Stan's hand slammed down inches from his head against the wall, forcefully keeping him blocked.

"I asked you a question, Craig," Stan said, low and angry, leaning in towards him like some kind of demented, homicidal freak. "Why are you avoiding me?"

Craig gaped at him, shocked and pissed off at Stan's level of idiocy. He crossed his arms over his chest angrily, shifting with his back against the wall with a dark, deeply unamused look in his narrowed eyes.

"What the _fuck_ are you on, Stanley," Craig spat, his emotions churning like Stan was the spark to his fuel. "What the hell am I supposed to think when you strangle me and obviously want nothing to do with me afterward? Couldn't just break up with me like a normal guy instead of trying to kill me? _Christ_."

Hurt was starting to slip through the anger, and Craig leaned up into Stan's space, shoving both hands hard against Stan's chest.

"I wasn't..." Stan stumbled back with the horrifying realization Craig thought Stan had _intentionally_ tried to kill him. And just because he wanted to break up with him? He couldn't have been more stunned than if Craig had taken a brick and swung at his head, the blunt trauma immeasurably less painful than Craig's accusation had been. "Craig...no. I didn't..."

If Craig only knew how fucked up Stan had been over the past month, seeing how much he was hurting Craig, but knowing how he was capable of hurting him so much more when they were together.

That night Stan had nearly killed Craig with their stupid choking game dare almost did him in with endless, aching guilt...

He tried to sleep after Craig left his house, but only managed to shut his eyes and doze just enough that his brain filtered through the surface chatter of his thoughts and dug in deep. He broke through a layer of shock that had settled the moment he had actually felt Craig stop breathing in that empty classroom, felt his pulse disappear beneath his fingertips.

That final, strangled gasp Craig had given was going to haunt him for the rest of his life, knowing how easily...how stupidly, incredibly _easily_ Craig could have been taken away from him forever. And just to show off his apparent knowledge of CPR? To prove that he could?

Stan was perilously close to sobbing himself sick as he curled his face into the pillow Craig had just vacated moments earlier, breathing in his shampoo and the fever-sweat that still clung to the pillowcase. He had to get up, move, before he drowned in his thoughts and what ifs. He paced around his room, stubbing his toe in the dark, but he relished the pain and only curled his arms around his bare torso to hold himself together, shaking so badly his teeth chattered.

Eventually he reached for the doorknob when he felt crushed and claustrophobic in his own room, needing so badly to talk to someone, own up to what he did, but the words froze up in his lungs before he could even sort them out in his head.

He considered going to Shelly, knowing she would damn well deliver any punishment he was craving and then some, but after she'd beat the shit out of him and throttle him a little herself, she'd get into this angry, defensive sister mode and gouge the most painful, impossible questions out of him with the bluntness of a dull, rusty spoon.

Stan didn't want care or pity or concern...his chest heaved at the thought of even going to Craig, unable to trust himself with him when he now knew how easily he could take away someone he cared so much about in an instant with his bare hands.

If he had held onto Craig's throat a second longer...if those fucking chest compressions hadn't worked...

Craig had been dead. Honest to god, no heartbeat, no breath, and for a moment Stan had lost himself to hysterical terror. He'd been shocked into inaction until he realized Craig was gone, and would stay dead if he didn't _move_.

It had been the longest minute and fifteen seconds of Stan's life. Never had he felt such a life-altering moment as he had then, starkly aware this situation could go one way or the other. Craig would either die and Stan would have to live knowing he had killed the possible love of his life, someone that could be his fucking _soul mate_ after only having three unbearably short weeks with him. Craig would be gone before either of them had made it to their eighteenth birthday, gotten their first car, or even graduated from high school.

But if he could bring Craig back... Stan didn't know, but at least he'd be alive so he could find out. Stan prayed for Craig to be alive, living breathing hating him with every pulse of his beating heart than dead and not knowing their full potential together.

When Craig had finally, god… _finally_ , taken a coughing hacking breath and squinted up at Stan, oblivious with that tiny wobbly smirk of his…Stan almost fell apart. Relief, shock, ridiculous hysterical **elation** that Craig was alive could never even begin to cover how he felt when Craig took that first breath after Stan had…after he'd…

Stan almost pushed his door open to find his mom, bury his head in her chest and wail in terror for that godawful thing he had almost done. She'd forgive him murder, _had_ forgiven him once before when his psychotic goldfish had gone on a murderous rampage when he was a kid and all the killings seemingly led back to him. But he didn't know how his mom could possibly fix heartsickness that ran this deep, Stan scared stupid and feeling so disgusted with himself that he couldn't stand the thought of anyone touching him.

Stan had never been so in love, so sure that Craig was the one he wanted to be with for the rest of his life, if he didn't cut that chance off short. He felt so stupid because of the suddenness that they'd gotten together, but so _sure_...

He had tried for years to convince himself that his ex-girlfriend, Wendy Testaburger, was that one love in his life, no matter his body had rejected her repeatedly and been telling him she wasn't, SHE told him she wasn't, and then Craig had drifted in and so completely blindsided him that Stan promptly forgot everything he was trying so hard to make himself feel, and just fell ass-over-elbows for the real thing.

Craig was so wildly crazy and unbelievably sexy the way he came alive under Stan's touch (when his touch wasn't _killing_ him, jesus) and seemed to crave every second of time they spent together, chastely or not.

Being wanted that much, adored, and desired was headily addictive, scouring his mind of all rational sense until he'd become dangerous with that much hold over someone. Craig, the sensible one out of the majority of their class, had even abandoned his own epic caution just because Stan had _wanted_ from him, and Stan wasn't mature enough to handle that sort of complete trust with someone's life.

That hellish night trapped in his own mind, reliving that scene over and over, had warped and altered until he was almost fully convinced he had killed Craig that afternoon.

The relief he felt when Craig climbed on that bus the next morning, the bus Stan had woken up Kyle and walked half a mile in the snow to catch because he couldn't face this alone, was overwhelmed by the guilt and disgust that layered him like a second skin. He could see his distance hurting and confusing Craig, but he couldn't stand the thought of touching him, physically hurting him again when it had been so close that Craig would have never felt anything ever again.

And, god, Craig didn't even realize he'd been gone! Didn't even care that Stan had had to use CPR to save his life, not just prove a meaningless bet. That he was so uncaring and indifferent about what Stan had done to him, so easily forgiving and dismissive, enraged Stan like nothing else.

He couldn't bear to be around him, hyperventilated at the thought of being in contact with him, but he felt wild and panicked the moment Craig was out of his sight, not glaring at him and breathing where Stan could be sure...

"What the **fuck** do you think you're doing?" Craig hissed, stuck in a 'wtf' mentality while Stan accosted him. His eyes were wide and frightened as he clutched at Stan's coat, his knuckles tight and bandaged on his right hand from where he'd punched the concrete floor a week earlier.

Stan jerked when he realized he'd been shaking Craig by his achingly thin upper arms, bruises forming almost instantly. He stopped, but couldn't let go even when he saw he was putting the fear in Craig's eyes that he expected him to have all along whenever he looked at him.

"You can't... You can't just ignore me for a month and then just start demanding things, Stan! What the fuck--"

"You were dead!" Stan screamed in his face, gripping Craig by his shoulders and shaking him again, practically sobbing.

Craig curled his arms up towards his chest protectively, wide-eyed and stunned. "What. What do you mean…"

"Your heart stopped beating, Craig. You fucking stopped _breathing_ , and I...I did that to you. I **killed** you."

Craig's heart was pounding, scared and shaken, but god. He wasn't afraid of Stan, just…so freaking afraid of losing him for good.

"But you brought me back," Craig whispered, his fingers curling in Stan's coat as he tentatively pressed his face against his shoulder. His arms were going numb with the painful pressure of Stan's grip, but he couldn't, didn't _want_ to shake him off.

Craig felt like a beaten wife so stupidly, destructively devoted that he'd give anything to go back to where they were before that day he'd… _died_. His level of dependency was scary, but he trusted Stan. God, he trusted him so much...enough to give him the chance to fix what he'd broken between them.

Craig reached towards Stan's face, reached for his mouth with the perception that he didn't care how much Stan hurt him, would gladly let him keep hurting him as long as he just didn't leave him again.

Stan reached back for him, a sob breaking between their lips and crushed with the force of their aching want. Stan attacked him then, trying - probably - to scare him away, but Craig would do anything, _endure_ anything just to keep him. No matter how much Stan made him miserable, there was no comparison to how miserable Craig made himself without him.

Somehow they discovered themselves retreating to their default location in the shop classroom nearby where they had violent, throw-down sex, kissing frantically with clothes being shredded off their bodies and tossed to the floor. There were hands in every single place they could grope and claw at once, the assault everything that they had been denying themselves in the accumulated lunch hours they had spent together.

They locked and barricaded the door, sticky streaks of come and sweat wiping swathes of tracks in the gritty floor where they rolled off their scattered clothing and fucked. It didn't matter who was on top - whoever was hard was the one driving until he spent himself and the other took over without a pause.

It was the most painful sex they'd ever had. Palms and knees were scraped open, backs and flanks torn by fingernails, necks and shoulders with teeth as they fucked each other dry. Gasps for breath were intermingled with furious, animalistic sobs as they released whatever accumulated hatred they'd built up for each other, for themselves.

It was the _best_ sex they had ever had, and Craig hoped to god they'd never have anything like it again.

Stan and Craig lost sense of everything else but each other, aching and wounded, but wrapped so tightly together that they wouldn't be pried apart by less than anything but the jaws of life - almost literally.

The principal eventually had to call the fire department to hammer down the door with nearly the whole fucking school crowded in behind them, delaying an entire class for the day during the lock in, a week longer at the state of the classroom.

The shop class was completely torn apart with tables overturned or flattened, unable to take the weight of two rutting teenage boys. The blackboard was swinging off one nail, a smudged, chalky ass print smack dab in the center where Stan had heaved Craig up and fucked him against the wall. Spatters of blood from their scraped knees and elbows, among other unidentifiable smears, decorated the grimy floor, their thighs sticky and also slashed with fingerprints of the same bloody mess where their bodies gave and tore on the inside as well as externally.

And Stan and Craig were a tangled, naked mess in the middle of it, so thoroughly intertwined the staff had to call their parents to get them separated.

Shelly, who was still a senior at their school since she skipped more classes than Craig, manhandled her way in past the gawking students, faculty, and firemen, threatening all with immediate dismemberment and castration with her _teeth_ if they didn't get the hell out of the way, and get them some goddamn blankets, for fuck's sake. Shelly guarded her two messed up faggots territorially until their parents arrived, frantic and causing even more of an uproar than their boys did.

Randy and Thomas were hysterical, buoying each other with loud denouncements on the lack of safety in the schools, attacks against upstanding students - not quite realizing their sons had done this to each _other_ \- and loudly, inanely debated legalizing of alcohol on school premises while they were at it. The two men suitably distracted and confused the staff, except not really because it wasn't the first time Randy, particularly, had inflamed violently heated arguments about absolutely everything unrelated to the situation, even though usually his outbursts occurred in the football stands during one of Stan's games.

The authorities had been contacted, but both families immediately rejected law suits. Or almost immediately, after Randy had inquired the amount they'd be entitled to, already calculating in beers and busty Asian porn. Sharon's scathing look promised he would have no use for porn when he got home, Shelly backing her up with a feral slash of perfect, castration-capable teeth.

Craig looked the worst off, Officer Barbrady tentatively asking him if he wanted to press charges, which Craig tiredly, grinningly replied only if he got to keep the handcuffs.

"Kids these days!" Barbrady exclaimed, tucking his baton in close to his hip incase the Tucker boy got funny ideas about that too.

The womenfolk were terse and worried, but shared looks of relief of seeing Stan and Craig back together since they knew best how miserable both boys had been the past grueling month after they'd grown so close. They took their babies home to clean and patch up while the men went to the bar to bond and get drunk and righteously pissed off about the handling of their sons.

The Tuckers and Marshes were later pulled in for an emergency parent-teacher conference because - like the rest of the student body - the principal and teachers still weren't quite clear if the two boys had been fighting this whole while, or sodomizing the shit out of each other.

Stan and Craig were suspended until the shop class was put back together, which threw Sharon into an absolute _fit_ because if this incident jeopardized Stan's scholarship in anyway, she wasn't beyond ramming her hybrid van right through the front doors of that school. Randy was mostly upset because their families had to pay for the repairs, which took away from his recreational activities and his most vital material for the world's biggest beer can pyramid - _beer_.

Craig was just glad for the time off together, their mothers obviously wanting to ground them both, but Stan and Craig had punished themselves enough when they were apart. Ultimately, Sharon and Cheryl just wanted their boys happy, but there was going to be some serious rules laid down afterwards, especially when they were approaching their senior year in high school and it was their last chance to make an impression for college recruiters.

The women started dinner at the Marshes', Shelly and Dot getting on surprisingly well as they exchanged new, vulgar slang and raunchy gossip, although the dinner table was notably lacking the two hellions that had brought their two families together in the first place.

Stan and Craig had been left alone in Stan's room, curled up tight beneath the blankets, bandaged and clean. Stan stroked his body from head to foot, Craig embarrassed that he hadn't taken better care of himself while they were broken up. He was thinner and paler than ever, when he could have been lifting weights and going to the tanning beds and salon to make himself fabulous and irresistible so Stan would kick himself for ever leaving a hot piece of ass like Craig's.

Instead he'd been miserable and helpless, so fucking depressed and just wanting back the asshole that had put him in that state to begin with. Craig didn't know how the longing he'd felt could be so hard to deal with when he and Stan had been indifferent, or at the most - mildly antagonistic - towards each other for the better part of their growing years.

Laying in bed together, bare-chested with their arms and legs wrapped around each other, was exactly where either of them wanted to be, probably for the rest of their, as yet, unforeseeable future together. They had pants on for intimacy without the sexual distraction, especially after they'd fucked so hard angry and hurtful until they'd both broken, drained and raw. They couldn't manage to do anything more than kiss and tiredly, obsessively touch, their mouths moving painfully afterwards without the cushioning of the contact between their lips when they finally, achingly began to _talk_.

Stan and Craig climbed into each other's awareness, talking about everything they'd internalized just to hear the other's voice and feel their breath against their skin. Even though, really, both of them could probably stand to brush their teeth.

"You made me _cry_ ," Craig said bluntly, like that was the most offensive part of the past miserable four weeks. Stan looked pained and ashamed, as he should, but Craig wasn't looking for an apology or excuse, and Stan didn't give him one. Stan just tightened his arms around Craig's unbearably thin and abused body, pressing his lips against his temple for a long moment.

"I…shit. I aced the CPR test," Stan admitted quietly, thinking about how he'd cleaned up the shop class room and pulled that stupid dummy out every day, looking up texts in the library, videos on YouTube, anything he possibly could to ensure he'd be able to practically resurrect a zombie if he had to. He prayed that there would never be an occasion where he'd have to use CPR again, knowing all that practice had come almost too late.

Stan didn't mention that he'd run out of the classroom and thrown up everything in his stomach right after the test, his face having gone white as he clamped a hand over his mouth and bolted, swearing that he could still taste Craig on 'Stanley's' plastic lips.

"Oh god, fucker," Craig laughed. "You damn well better have after all that shit." He raked his nails down Stan's side to make him snort and squirm, the other carefully drawing Craig's injured hand away from his ticklish spots.

Stan kissed the back of his hand, not knowing when or how Craig had hurt himself, but it didn't take much to guess with the vicious tearing and scabbing around his knuckles, Craig working his fingers stiffly. Stan's faint smile faded, watching his thumb softly stroke over the uneven bumps of Craig's knuckles so he didn't have to look at him.

"Craig," Stan murmured, afraid to speak and remind Craig of all the reasons he shouldn't be with him, "I tried to kill you. How do you not hate me right now?"

"Uhh, because you weren't trying to kill me, dipshit," Craig sighed, exasperated as he tugged a little on Stan's hand, trying to get him to look up. "You were, y'know," he made some sort of flailing arm motion that stood for 'trying to do CPR and failing epically'.

"Shit happens," he shrugged.

"You could have _died_ ," Stan pressed, unable to take forgiveness that easily. He wasn't convinced Craig comprehended how close he'd come to permanent death, that aggravating guy so mild and derisive.

"Emo fag," Craig huffed, already done with Stan's self-recriminations, and wondered now when they'd get back to the mushy, girly shit that was much more bearable than angsting over what had happened in the past. He made a soft, startled noise when Stan pressed against him, but just patted his back, affectionately patronizing.

"I'm so crazy in love with you," Stan whispered, his face buried against Craig's neck, un-bruised except where he'd bitten him anew, his hands hugging Craig's ribs. He could feel Craig's heart stutter, which frightened his own into racing, while Craig went silent and still above him.

Eventually, Craig released a slow, shuddering breath, curving his hand against the back of Stan's head and holding his face there. Stan closed his eyes and breathed him in, or at least tried to until he realized Craig was trying to suffocate him.

"Dude!" Stan sputtered, shoving at Craig, red-faced and panting as he glared up at him.

"No you aren't," Craig glared back, but his eyes flickered and twitched away uncomfortably at Stan's staring that he knew could last for days - _weeks_. He rolled away onto his side, his back to Stan and pulling away.

Stan furrowed his brows as he pushed up on his elbow, reaching out to cover Craig's sharp hip with his hand, tugging him back, but Craig resisted.

"Goddamnit Craig! You can't avoid--"

"Yes I goddamn well can, because you _aren't_."

"Stop telling me I'm not in love with you! I am if I fucking say I am!" Stan yelled. He didn't know how they'd degenerated into third-grade arguing, but he couldn't say he was surprised, just frustrated.

Craig wouldn't turn over, even when Stan yanked at him, so he just growled softly and pressed his mouth to the back of Craig's neck, probably the only place not bruised and bitten up until now.

"I love you," Stan whispered fiercely against his neck, causing Craig's throat to swell as he swallowed thickly, eyes sore and burning.

"Then don't…" Craig started, hitching a breath dangerously close to a sob, but he wouldn't allow it to come out. "Don't leave me again, Stan. Ever."

Stan's heart broke with Craig's almost-sob, with his wavering threat hanging in the charged air between them.

"I won't. I lo--"

"I got it already, christ!" Craig turned around and nearly head-butted him, his tone strained and annoyed, but he couldn't help the shy tugging at his mouth as they just looked at each other.

Stan settled back down, drawing Craig to move against him until his head was pillowed against Stan's chest. Stan rested his hand against the side of his neck as he stroked his thumb, slow and steady, over Craig's calming pulse.

A few moments later, Craig's voice drifted up, questing and suspicious.

"So…you _really_ love me, huh?" Craig inquired, infusing a bit of skepticism into his tone.

"Yes, Craig," Stan said, exasperated but amused.

"How much?" Craig sounded like he was trying to leverage a bargaining chip, finding one of Stan's weak spots and exploiting it for all that he could, unable to help himself.

Stan gave a laughing sort of growl into Craig's ear as he rolled over him and _showed_ him how much he really fucking loved him while murmuring the same sentiment, voice low and intimate. Craig arched up into him with a wordless cry and came faster than Stan ever had the moment Stan brushed his palm over the front of his sleep pants, cracking up when Craig just went red and grumbled into his shoulder afterwards.

"Dude…" Stan teased, gentle and loving and everything Craig shouldn't have been able to read into, but did.

Craig didn't know where their relationship would go after this moment, after they healed and tentatively rebuilt what had taken them seventeen years to learn. They only had one year left of high school, and after that was Stan's fancypants scholarship into college football, and Craig with no real ambitions yet other than getting laid on a regular basis. Who knew if they could take the strain of being an 'out' couple, or if they could contend with two psychotic families.

All Craig cared about in that instant was being right where he was meant to be - wrapped up stupidly happy and fucked out in Stan's arms, still smoldering from their fight and slightly nauseous in a strangely giddy way from the fact Stan _really_ loved him that fucking much.

Stan had a lot of making up to do and kissing ass for bailing on Craig and making him cry before he'd be able to earn Craig's full trust back, and possibly drag his own love confession out of him. It would be a long time coming before Craig made himself that vulnerable again.

But whatever happened between them, now or in the future, Craig did maybe love that stupid fucker after all, and they were in this game together.

-fin


End file.
